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fJresitJcnt Cbtoing^ 
^Soaks on College Subjects 

AMERICAN COLLEGES: THEIR STUDENTS 

AND WORK. 
WITHIN COLLEGE WALLS. 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN. 
THE AMERICAN COLLEGE IN AMERICAN 

LIFE. 
COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION. 
IF I WERE A COLLEGE STUDENT. 
THE CHOICE OF A COLLEGE 
A LIBERAL EDUCATION AND A LIBERAL 

FAITH 
COLLEGE TRAINING AND THE BUSINESS 

MAN. 
A HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN 

AMERICA 
EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST. 



EDUCATION IN THE 
FAR EAST 



EDUCATION IN THE 
FAR EAST 



BY 



CHARLES F. THWING, LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND 
ADELBERT COLLEGE, CLEVELAND 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cfte fiitoertfibe $te#S Cambridge 

1909 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY CHARLES F. THWING 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published June iqoq 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooles Received 

JUN 12 180S 

L CouyrufM Entry _ 

CLAS«A AXc Hi 
COPY ... • 



To M. D. T. 

THE COMPANION OF A YEAR'S VOYAGE 
AND OF THE VOYAGE OF YEARS 



PREFATORY NOTE 

This book is not a description. It seeks to be an 
interpretation : an interpretation of forces, tenden- 
cies, and movements, in parts of the world which 
are destined to fill an enlarging place in men's 
thoughts. The relation of education to these con- 
ditions is the most important of all relations. I, 
therefore, shall be glad if the reader is able to 
think of the book as at once human, and a bit, 
though I hope not too much, educational. 

C. F. T. 

Cleveland, 1st May, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Problem of the East and the Fab 

East 3 

JAPAN 
II. The Japanese Mind 61 

III. Similarities and Contrasts of Japa- 

nese and American Education 70 

IV. Education without Religion and with 

Ethics 95 

V. The Japanese as Administrators 104 
VI. Japan as a Colonizing and Expanding 

Power 112 

CHINA 

VII. Chinese Institutions 123 

VIII. The New Education in China 138 

IX. The Chinese Menace 158 

INDIA 
X. India's Need of Technical and Indus- 
trial Education 169 



x CONTENTS 

XI. The Higher Education for Women in 

India 178 

XII. "What Shall I Do?" The Question 

of the College Man in India 187 

XIII. The Future of India 196 

AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC 

XIV. Science as a Nation's Protector 225 
XV. Great Men in the Philippines 235 

XVI. The American Teacher in the Philip- 
pines 245 

XVII. The Competition of the Races in the 

Straits Settlements 254 

XVIII. Indirect Forces for Civilization in the 

Far East 263 

Index 273 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST AND 
THE FAR EAST 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST AND 
THE FAR EAST 

IN JAPAN 

The problem of the East and the Far East 
relates to five nations, Japan, China, Korea, 
India, and Egypt. The one problem is of five 
applications, and the five applications repre- 
sent one : a force and condition for the solu- 
tion, — education. 

Archbishop Tait said, near the close of his 
long life, that from his youth he had found 
that the English Church was in a crisis. It is 
a crisis no less permanent through which Ja- 
pan is passing ; yet at the present moment and 
in these years, indeed, the crisis seems pecul- 
iarly critical. The crisis represents conditions 
rather than acts, or events, or even movements 
or forces. It is not a condition, however, aris- 
ing from wars either waged or won, or to be 
waged, or even from rumors of war. The crisis 



4 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

concerns not the relation of races oriental or 
occidental, of capital and labor, of socialism, 
of taxation, or of any economic theory, of de- 
mocracy and absolutism. These conditions or 
forces may, in other nations at the present 
time, represent or create crises; but not in 
Japan. 

The critical problem of Japan is, in a word, 
to continue to keep its life simple, as it takes 
its place with the other great political powers 
of the world. Simplicity of life is a state of 
mind quite as much as a condition of environ- 
ment. But it is concerned with environment 
as well as with the mental state. The simple 
life is the interpretation of life in terms of the 
spirit, and not of the flesh or of the purse. It 
stands for the negation of the lust of the flesh 
and the lust of the eyes. It knows not pride, 
and it does know humility, quietness, gentle- 
ness. It is free from and absolutely above all 
desire to make display. It represents direct- 
ness, honesty, decorum. It incarnates the cardi- 
nal graces quite as well as the cardinal virtues, 
— and even these virtues it does not neglect. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 5 

Such a life, of quiet and reserved and dig- 
nified simplicity, the nation and the people of 
Japan have led. Will they be able to main- 
tain it ? 

Several causes are working to do away with 
such a life among the fifty millions who form 
this nation. 

One of these causes lies in the increasing 
wealth of the country, and especially in the 
increasing wealth of men who already are rich. 
In common with most peoples, the Japanese 
have large eyes for the rich man. In "Who 's 
Who in Japan " are named several men and 
families of wealth and of large material power. 
One of these families, the Mitsui, it is said, 
in somewhat foreign English, " is one of the 
oldest millionaire families and the most noted 
hereditary houses of l business kings ' in Ja- 
pan, managing the big family concerns some- 
what after a fashion of constitutional mon- 
archy, for the eleven heads of the main stock 
and scions of the family are individually in- 
significant and only acquire importance as 
proprietors of different concerns." In the same 



6 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

volume the president of the Tokyo Steamship 
Company is described as laying the founda- 
tion of his fortune in utilizing the refuse of 
gas and coal-tar works, and he is commended 
as being " now an acknowledged power in 
business world." A certain bank president is 
described as being " adopted into the present 
millionaire family as husband of its only 
daughter " ; and still another is called a one of 
the new-made millionaires." Such interpre- 
tations are intimations that wealth has already 
taken a no small place in the esteem of the 
Japanese people. 

It can also without rashness be affirmed 
that the industrial and commercial develop- 
ment of Japan in the next decades is certain 
to increase both the number of rich men and 
the riches of men already rich. Formerly the 
merchant was of the lowest social class. He 
was below the farmer and the mechanic. The 
Samurai might handle the plough or the hoe, 
but not the soroban. By this method, power 
was divided, — the power of wealth was kept 
apart from the power of the higher social 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 7 

order. All this is changed. Men of wealth 
receive decorations from the hand of the 
Emperor. The head of the Mitsui family is a 
baron, and Okura, "one of the new-made 
millionaires," already referred to, wears the 
Third Order of the Rising Sun. The presence 
of great wealth is in every country a menace to 
simplicity, and especially is it a menace when 
united with social rank and royal honors. 

A second force working against simplicity 
is found in the fact that Japan is taking 
her place with the world-powers. The world- 
powers are not, and never have been, accus- 
tomed to laying emphasis upon the simple 
life. The ruling classes of these powers stand 
for material splendor, for impressive environ- 
ment, for elegance, if not for greatness, of 
architecture, and for elaborateness in the 
daily provision for one's personal sustenance 
and happiness. These classes are lavish in 
domestic expenditure, profuse in the attention 
paid to physical comforts, prodigal in getting 
and using whatever can delight the exterior 
senses or intoxicate the lower elements of the 



8 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

imagination of man. As a world-power Japan 
feels that she, too, should imitate the material 
magnificence of other great nations. Royal pal- 
aces in many parts, some seldom occupied, 
courtly and splendid ceremonial, large ex- 
penditures which do not represent efficiency, 
these are intimations of the temptations which 
beset the new empire and, in a lessening de- 
gree, its people. Such temptations the Japa- 
nese cannot avoid. There is no escape. The 
condition arises from Japan taking a place 
among the world-powers ; and such a condi- 
tion militates mightily against the simple life. 
This condition is reinforced in at least two 
ways: by the Japanese who go abroad (and 
they are not a few), and by the foreigners who 
come to Japan as visitors or as residents. The 
Japanese are gifted in the art of imitation (the 
Chinese call them monkeys). Travelling in 
either the United States or Western Europe, 
or living for a time in New York, London, 
Berlin, Paris, Vienna, they return home bear- 
ing the assurance that their Tokyo or Yoko- 
hama or Kyoto cannot be worthy of metro- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 9 

politan rank and prestige, unless these cities 
too adopt the more dominant customs and cere- 
monials of the governmental, commercial, and 
social capitals of the world. 

The example, too, of liberal or prodigal 
expenditure set by the foreigner coming to 
Japan moves toward the same conclusion. 
The American and the English — and they 
seem more numerous than other nationalities 
— lay a tremendous accent upon their mate- 
rial belongings and comforts. Such an atten- 
tion is a revelation to the simple and hardy, 
sandal-footed and lightly clothed folk of the 
island-kingdom. 

But other causes, and opposing, there are, 
which are vigorous in maintaining the general 
and the pristine simplicity of this people. 

The first of the six causes which I shall 
name is industriousness. In Japan everybody 
works. Japan is a Holland in respect to the 
commonness of labor and the diligence of the 
laborer. I am sure the very dogs would work 
here as they do in Holland, if there were any 
dogs. But animals of all sorts are few. Man 



10 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

is the laborer. Labor arises from both neces- 
sity and habit. Originally, of course, the habit 
arose from the necessity. But now both unite 
in urging all to work. For Japan has received 
few of those gifts which Nature gives, even 
to squandering, to the tropics. The Japanese 
people are of the Northern zones, and like 
most people of these zones, have to work for 
what they get. Industriousness, be it said, 
tends to keep life simple. For industriousness 
teaches the cost of things, not in dollars do 
I mean, but in that cost which the toil and 
weariness of body and of brain represent. In- 
dustriousness is the enemy of luxuriousness, 
extravagance, prodigality. So long as the 
Japanese remain a people of hard and con- 
stant work, — and apparently the time when 
they can afford not to be such is far off, — so 
long will the tendency toward maintaining the 
simple life remain strong. 

The people are, furthermore, a people of 
self-restraint. They are free, by nature, from 
vaingloriousness. If their triumph within a 
decade over the two most populous nations has 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 11 

given to a few a sense of arrogance, this sense 
is neither general nor constant. Their walk 
and conversation is one of quietness and hu- 
mility. They are unwilling to enter the com- 
petitive life of social rivalries. A distinguished 
banker recently built a house. The architect 
planned a dwelling which he thought became 
the wealth and station of his client. But the 
house proved far more elaborate than the 
owner desired. " I do not think I shall live in 
it," he said to a friend of mine; "I want a 
simple house." On the shore at Hayama, near 
Yokohama, is a royal palace. In the rear is 
a sloping hill. Few Japanese are building 
houses on the hillside, because they are un- 
willing to look down on a prince. They also 
are unwilling as a people to get credit for 
themselves through another's discredit. Such 
self-restraint, self-abnegation, represents a 
form and a condition making for simplicity. 

Buddhism, too, has promoted, and will still 
continue to promote, simplicity of life. The 
essence of B uddhism is, if I at all understand 
it, the principle of the mystic, to put one's 



12 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

self in harmony with the Absolute : the Ab- 
solute is the Eternal in time and the Infinite 
in space. The Absolute is the Buddhist's God. 
This harmony is intellectual, — achieved by 
meditation ; it is emotional, — oneness of feel- 
ing arising from unity of intellectual reflec- 
tion; it is also volitional, — the resultant of 
both intellectual and emotional sympathy. 
That Buddhism is thus comprehended by the 
great body of the people is not to be expected ; 
but the presence among the people of such 
an essential principle cannot but make for the 
living of the simple life. Social ambitions — 
the cause of much living which is not simple 
— vanish in the light of such a fundamental 
truth. Intense struggle for political or finan- 
cial power and place ceases before the decla- 
ration of so sublime a doctrine. The great 
teaching of Buddhism enforces the lesson of 
simplicity, as do the face and the form of the 
great image placed in the Cryptomeria groves 
at Kamakura. 

The racial purity of the people also aids in 
promoting simplicity. The contrast between 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 13 

the mixture of races which one finds in most 
American commonwealths and in most Ameri- 
can cities, and the unmixed blood of most 
Japanese provinces and towns is deep and 
impressive. Of course there are in Japan, as 
in other parts of eastern Asia, Eurasians (one 
half of the word, " of Europe " and one half 
" of Asia ") ; but few are they. The Japanese 
is Japanese, and Japanese he will on the 
whole remain. Such purity and oneness of 
blood tend to give unity to the interpretation 
of life, of truth, and of duty. Such purity 
and oneness tend to create and to foster sim- 
plicity of personal habits and family customs. 
A certain sea-level of behavior, of convention 
and conviction is thus maintained. 

The respect paid to the scholar, and the 
regard in which scholarship is held, also aid 
in securing the great result of simplicity. In 
the Far East the scholar is honored as he is 
not in the Far West. The professor in the 
Imperial University in Tokyo has a social 
standing of the order of that belonging to 
the members of the Supreme Court of Japan. 



14 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

"Teacher" is a word of the utmost respect. 
In Japan, as in most lands, the scholar has 
a small purse. His life must be made simple. 
The community in Japan demands that his 
life be simple. Even his students would lose 
respect for him, if he were guilty of any at- 
tempt to make that life elaborate or splendid. 
The influence of the scholar, therefore, is in 
favor of simplicity. This influence is profound 
and wide. So long as the scholar is honored, 
and so long as learning commands its present 
respect, so long there will be serious difficulty 
in making Japanese life ornate or elaborate. 

There is one further condition tending to- 
ward the same conclusion. I refer to the gen- 
eral teaching of ethics. No subject of the 
whole course of study, from the primary school 
to the university, is so commonly taught or 
is so constantly honored in its teaching, as 
the science of right living. The ethics of 
Confucius has for centuries commanded the 
attention of the Japanese mind and the devo- 
tion of the Japanese heart. Its fundamental 
principles are taught, illustrated, impressed 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 15 

daily in thousands of schools. It is, too, very 
good ethics for teaching, learning, obeying. 
Of the five principles of the noble man which 
Confucius pointed out, — benevolence, up- 
rightness, decorum, enlightenment, and sin- 
cerity, — the Japanese have specially adopted 
the second and the third, uprightness and 
decorum. The man of right character and 
of beautiful conduct represents the Japanese 
ideal. That ideal is held up in public school 
and private. It is presented in the text-books 
issued by the government, and prepared by 
a graduate of an American college, Professor 
Nakashima of the University of Tokyo. Such 
an ideal offers to the Japanese people a life 
simple without barrenness, and rich without 
being overwrought. 

To this problem, therefore, of keeping life 
simple in an age which is not simple, and in a 
world of which the stronger nations are giv- 
ing themselves to a Roman luxuriousness, the 
Japanese people are addressing themselves. 
A great, a very great problem, in its serious- 
ness and fundamental relations, it is. Despite 



16 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

opposing forces, there are strong reasons for 
believing, as I have tried to intimate, that 
this advancing nation of the Far East may 
solve the problem more satisfactorily than 
any world-power has yet solved it. 

IN CHINA 

The problem of China is no less than the 
problem of her civilization. It is not a prob- 
lem which she interprets for herself. To inti- 
mate that she is not civilized would seem to 
her the height of Western arrogance. For 
to her the rest of the world is sunk in the 
depths of barbarism, out of which she alone 
has lifted herself, or in which she was never 
involved. But according to Western standards, 
much, very much, remains for China to do 
before she can take her place with civilized 
powers and peoples. 

The biological elements included in this 
comprehensive problem are of tremendous 
significance. Only one third or one quarter 
of the children born in China reach adult 
life. Such slaughter of the innocents is inevi- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 17 

table. Most hygienic conditions are unsani- 
tary. Most cities are without water or drainage 
systems. Peking draws its water from wells, 
and pours its waste into the streets. Wu- 
chang's little alleys reek with filth. Such 
cities, great and small, are only types. The 
material home, almost everywhere made of 
hardened mud, is dark, damp, dismal, deso- 
late. In the biological part of the whole prob- 
lem belong certain interpretations as well as 
facts. Disease is thought by Chinese physi- 
cians to be a conflict between the spirit of light 
and the spirit of darkness within the man. 
The thought is strictly mediaeval. The battle 
of the spirits of many sorts is a usual concep- 
tion. All of life and of being is filled with 
their presence. The treatment of disease, too, 
is quite as irrational as its diagnosis. Ex- 
orcism and the prescription of nondescript 
compounds are customary. Ground-up beetles 
are given in treating scarlet fever, for beetles, 
too, shed their skins. The razor is the most 
important instrument in mid-wifery. Such are 
some of the biological conditions which China 



18 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

is obliged to consider in solving the problem 
of her civilization. 

But the sociological conditions are yet more 
impressive. The garment of Chinese life is 
woven of superstitions. It is impossible to re- 
count or to indicate their significance. On the 
wall of a Chinese town, or settlement, may be 
found painted a red spot. It resembles a hole. 
The devil trying to enter at night will be de- 
ceived, supposing that it is a real hole, and 
will rush up to it, only to crush his skull ! The 
gateway to every yamen or house opens upon 
a wall. Evil spirits are supposed to move in 
straight lines. Therefore, having come through 
the gateway, they will be met by this brick 
screen and diverted from their course. The 
midsummer revolt of 1900 was indeed a mad- 
ness, inspired in no small part by a belief in 
evil spirits. As the life of the individual is 
lived in superstition, so is his death died. The 
funeral has great sociological as well as reli- 
gious meaning. The length and the degree of 
mourning are subjected to well-ordered regu- 
lations. The completeness of the mortuary 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 19 

ceremonies may entail a debt on the family 
lasting for generations. The whole sociological 
condition is the type of extreme conservatism. 
" It has been so " is sufficient reason for the 
thing being as it is. China is a nation petrified. 
In her problem of civilization China, o£ 
course, includes the element of her own gov- 
ernment. That government is an oriental mon- 
archy imposed upon a social democracy. It is 
strong or weak, as the monarchy is strong or 
weak. It has usually been an effective gov- 
ernment. It has not counted any life dear in 
the face of its own wishes. Its monarch, su- 
preme and absolute, circumscribed by plots 
and cabals, is a modern counterpart of the 
Roman emperor after the time of Constantine. 
In this government are two significant ele- 
ments: the absence of formal law, and the 
presence of official dishonesty. China has no 
Parliament to make laws, no law schools (or 
only one) to train lawyers, few formal courts 
which administer laws, and no administration 
which can be called the administration of jus- 
tice. The justice administered by the mandarin 



20 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

is a travesty. The practice of his court is a 
practice without those procedures and forms 
which Western civilization has adopted as nec- 
essary for the discovery of truth. The first 
information which one may have of a case 
brought against him may be the actual exe- 
cution of the judgment. A citizen of Hankow 
was informed that within twenty-four hours 
he must pay a bill of ten thousand taels. The 
bill was for lumber furnished and work done 
by a carpenter. He declared that he had bought 
neither lumber nor labor. But the accounts 
were apparently right. What was his method 
of relief ? He went before the court, and ac- 
knowledged that the bill was correct, that 
he had received the goods. But at the same 
time he exhibited receipts in full. The fact 
was that both sets of statements were forgeries 
from beginning to end! The carpenter-con- 
tractor had spent five thousand taels in bribes 
to secure a decision from the mandarin giving 
judgment for ten thousand taels. In case the 
judgment had been executed, he would have 
made five thousand taels. The man against 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 21 

whom the false charge was made had spent 
two thousand to three thousand taels to secure 
a judgment in his favor. He himself was sat- 
isfied, for the money thus spent in bribes was 
less than a third of the ten thousand taels 
with which he was charged. The mandarin 
and his associates were satisfied, for they had 
received money from both prosecutor and 
defendant. The prosecutor was probably not 
satisfied, but then he deserved punishment! 

This case is only a type of the "grafting" 
which is a second characteristic of the gov- 
ernment. I suppose it is impossible to over- 
estimate its prevalence or to minimize its sig- 
nificance. It is the force which moves the 
administrative machinery. Of course the Im- 
perial Customs, whether under the incom- 
parable administration of Sir Robert Hart, 
the great man of China, or under his recently 
appointed successor, is always to be excepted. 
But the exception helps to prove the rule. 
For the Chinese government cannot trust this 
important matter of collecting customs to its 
own ofiicers. Every office represents a bargain. 



22 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

It has its price. The officer accepting it pays 
the price and makes himself good, and more 
than good, by payment from his official sub- 
ordinates. It may be some great vice-royalty, 
which represents the payment of three hun- 
dred thousand taels; but out of the office 
he may make through farming the taxes six 
hundred thousand taels a year. It may be a 
petty gate-keeping office of only a few taels 
a month. It likewise involves purchase and 
sale. " Is the Presidency of the Central Board 
of Education also bought?" I inquired. "Of 
course; everything is bought." 

In this financial relationship it may not be 
unfitting to mention that the Chinese gov- 
ernment publishes no statement of its income 
or expenditure, no statement of its debts or 
pecuniary obligations. 

The biological, the sociological, and the 
governmental elements of civilization are the 
elements which China must consider in any 
attempt made for her own civilization. To 
them might be added the religious and the 
educational. But religion as such plays a very 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 23 

insignificant part in the life of the Chinese. 
Confucianism hardly deserves to be called re- 
ligion. Confucius had little to say about gods. 
As a system of ethics, Confucianism had an 
inexpressible influence, — an influence which 
has, on the whole, been paralyzing to the intel- 
lect, not inspiring to the conscience or moving 
to the will. Outside of Confucianism there is 
no religious liberty. Education has the highest 
place among the forces making for China's en- 
largement. Although I shall write of education 
in another chapter, yet it is to be said com- 
prehensively that, though scholarship fulfills 
a noble function in Chinese thought, and 
the scholar is greatly honored, yet the educa- 
tion of the people has not been the thought 
or the wish of the governing powers. At the 
present time, the government is establishing 
schools; but it is greatly limited in the work 
by the scarcity of teachers. 

The problem, therefore, which China has 
set for herself, or rather which the world has 
set for her, of civilization, is as difficult as it 
is comprehensive. Can China become civilized 



24 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

within a time for which the mind of man 
properly takes calculations? The answer in- 
volves many considerations. At best, too, the 
answer would be remote from conclusiveness. 
In favor of an affirmative answer several 
considerations may be intimated : — 

(1) China has rich natural resources. I have 
in my journeying just passed one of the richest 
iron deposits in the world. The natural re- 
sources in the form of metals are largely un- 
explored, but exploration has gone far enough 
to show that these resources are very valu- 
able. The soil is usually poor ; it is, like sec- 
tions of Spain, worn out by centuries of cul- 
tivation. 

(2) The climate is, on the whole, good, 
especially in the north. The territory covers 
many degrees of latitude, and offers a variety 
of heat and cold, most promotive of good re- 
sults to humanity. 

(3) The race is virile. Of good stature, it 
has good strength. Given a fair chance, it 
would develop rapidly. 

(4) The nation has a great literature, the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 25 

gift of many and remote centuries. Such a 
literature is a noble foundation for humanity's 
highest achievements. 

(5) Likewise the nation honors scholarship. 
The scholarly ideal is vastly more influential 
than the materialistic. The learned man is 
more honored than the rich man. 

(6) Further, the Chinese merchant or man- 
ufacturer is distinguished for his honesty. 
Commercial integrity is a cause and safeguard 
of national honor. 

(7) China is so situated that the best in- 
fluences (the worst, too) of the more advanc- 
ing Western nations are now working upon 
her provinces and peoples. 

But there are certain reasons, and strong 
ones, making for the conclusion that China 
will not take her place among the great 
powers. 

First, China is Asiatic. The division be- 
tween Asia and Europe in ethnology, in reli- 
gion, and in civilization is deep and wide. " East 
is East and West is West." No man of West- 
ern Europe can quite appreciate the width and 



26 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

depth of the chasm separating these two parts 
of the one great ancient continent. 

Second, China is not only Asiatic, she is 
also Chinese. Her civilization is unique. Hu- 
manity has come forth in the nation in 
most individualistic, personal, and national 
forms. 

Third, China is conservative. Her golden 
age lies in the past. Her eye is fixed upon the 
treasures of her history rather than upon the 
development of her present and future. 

Fourth, China is not only conservative, she 
is also the largest nation. She represents more 
than one fourth of the entire population of 
the world. Any influence or force to affect 
her vast and conservative body is, necessarily, 
of a tremendous impact. It is a difficult thing 
to think of a force sufficiently moving to make 
an impression. 

Fifth, the Chinese government and adminis- 
tration are intricate and complex. The govern- 
ment is, as I have said, a union of a political 
autocracy and a social democracy. The admin- 
istration is a matter, not of written rule, but 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 27 

of personal adjustment and agreement. The 
method of yesterday is not that of to-day, 
and the method of to-day is unlike that of 
to-morrow. Any change, therefore, in the 
permanent elements of its civilization, gov- 
ernment, and administration is exceedingly 
difficult to achieve. 

Sixth, withal the Chinese mind is astute. 
Loyal to China and to her history, it easily 
seeks to circumvent influences opposed to 
itself, and is quickly and keenly aroused to 
oppose whatever force may be brought against 
its national integrity. 

When one sums up the reasons for and the 
reasons against the belief that China may take 
her place among the great and active powers 
of the world, one feels in great doubt. No one 
knows what may occur in that country. Dynas- 
ties rise and fall, and the Manchus still retain 
their place. An infant emperor seems to be 
quite as powerful as an empress dowager of 
threescore years and ten. Present intimations 
are, on the whole, favorable to the belief that 
China will still be China, and will be for the 



28 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Chinese a thousand years from this time quite 
as truly as to-day. 

IN KOREA 

The problem of and in Korea is triangu- 
lar: it may be interpreted from three sides, 
— -Japan's, Korea's, and the world's. 

Seen from the side of Japan, the Korean 
problem should be so solved that the penin- 
sula shall never become a point of military or 
governmental peril. The phrase, "A general 
war in the Far East" may be as indefinite 
and as frequent as the phrase "a general 
European war"; but in the event of such a 
conflict it is of extreme importance that all 
conditions in Korea — governmental, naval, 
military, social — should favor Japan. In case 
of hostility, Fusan and Chemulpho would 
prove to be excellent ports for assembling 
forces to descend upon Moji or Nagasaki. 
Korea must be safe for Japan's interests. 

Further, Japan desires that Korea be made 
a favorable territory for the immigration of 
her rapidly growing population, and for the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 29 

use and increase of her capital. Already Jap- 
anese farmers are passing over. Already are 
the numbers of these immigrants so great as 
to prompt the Japanese churches to send mis- 
sionaries to evangelize their own countrymen 
living on this foreign soil. Korea is, also, 
financially a belated land and nation. Capital, 
either Japanese or American or English, now 
properly invested, would return a large income. 
To this fact Japan is not blind. 

Moreover, in her desire for national aggran- 
dizement Japan may worthily regard the Ko- 
rean peninsula as a proper field for the exten- 
sion of her power. Upon this critical point 
only the most general interpretation is per- 
missible. Japan realizes what is her duty to 
and in Korea to-day, but what may be her 
duty to-morrow she knows not. Annexation is 
sometimes spoken of. But Japan knows that 
annexation at the present time, under present 
conditions, is not a duty or even a right, and 
would now prove most inopportune. There 
is in Japan a strong pro-Japanese party in 
relation to Korea; there is also a party be- 



30 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

lieving in such a control of the peninsula as 
should primarily prove to be of benefit to the 
peninsula itself. The Japanese government, 
sending its ablest minister as Resident-General, 
is willing to await the future. 

Prince Ito has a policy very clear in at 
least one respect, — he proposes to keep the 
peace, and he proposes to keep the peace by 
peaceful measures. In the more or less trou- 
bled condition of the country, the outlawry 
element is sure to emerge. " The righteous 
soldiers," as some of the discharged Korean 
forces call themselves, create havoc, — guerilla 
bands attacking villages, destroying railroad 
stations and tracks, easily mobilized and dis- 
persing like a morning fog. Conflicts between 
such bands, when they can be found, and Jap- 
anese battalions are for a time inevitable. But 
Ito's policy is plain ; his administration is 
civil, and not, as he might easily make it, 
military. He does not seek peace, as the motto 
of the great Puritan Commonwealth indicates, 
with the sword. 

Korea's problem, interpreted by herself, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 31 

is the problem of how she can save herself. 
Lying in the problem is the question what 
has she that is worth saving ? For has she not 
really already lost herself ? She illustrates the 
remark of Christ, "From him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that which he hath." 
Korea has rich resources of nature. But she 
has no resources in herself. The Anglo-Saxon 
commonwealths on both sides of the Atlantic 
have in every emergency found themselves 
possessed of men who could bring order out 
of confusion and snatch victory from the 
jaws of seeming disaster. In her crises Ko- 
rea for three hundred years has found herself 
without wise and sacrificing leadership. To- 
day she is left alone. Keeping herself to her- 
self, — a hermit nation, — she represents the 
penalty of selfishness, — poverty and friend- 
lessness. Her army stood for inefficiency, and 
it is now disbanded. Her manufactures were 
and are left untouched by modern discoveries 
and processes, and they have largely perished. 
Her people, despite the efforts of missionaries 
and a few enlightened leaders, are still sub- 



32 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

merged in ignorance and in social and reli- 
gious superstition. The social distinctions of 
classes are an encumbrance. Offices were in 
no small degree drafts on the public chest, 
and not symbols of service. Indolence was 
and is customary with officials and constitu- 
tional with the gentry. Truthfulness is for- 
eign to the Korean's nature. Korea may well 
ask herself what has she still left worth the 
saving. The shores of Japan are as rocky as 
those of Korea, and her soil is no more fer- 
tile, but she, with her islands, has made her- 
self one of the great powers. Korea's fault is 
not with her stars, but with herself, that she 
is an underling of Japan. She lacks men. Her 
own men can be her only saviors, and if she 
calls for them, they do not respond. Indeed, 
her old deposed Emperor had hardly strength 
to call. If the new Emperor proves to have 
strength and knows the needs of his country, 
it is doubtful whether he can summon asso- 
ciates able these needs to fill. 

There is a victory which the conquered 
may always win over the martial conqueror, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 33 

if he has the strength. It is the victory of 
language, of social customs and manners, of 
life itself. Such a victory Italy won over the 
conquering Northern tribes; such a victory 
the Saxons won over the Normans. But Korea 
lacks the power, the acumen, the wisdom, and 
the superiority of individual and of nation 
necessary for gaining such a conquest. She 
has lost herself. Her foe is not Japan, or 
Western civilization, but herself. 

The Korean problem is also a question in 
which the world is interested. The world 
is daily becoming smaller. Swifter, cheaper, 
and more frequent inter-communication has 
made it a little neighborhood of nations. The 
concerns of each are the concerns of all, and 
the concerns of all are the concerns of each. 
The lot of Korea, therefore, has interest for 
every people, of the Occident as well as of the 
Orient. The world is watching Korea, to dis- 
cover the justice or injustice, the wisdom or the 
foolishness, of the Japanese protectorate. The 
stronger nations of the earth have come into a 
period of governing the weaker. Each, there- 



34 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

fore, is interested in the success or failure of 
every attempt at affiliation, colonization, or 
"protection." The world has peculiar interest 
in this relationship of Japan to Korea, not 
only because of Korea, but also and more be- 
cause of Japan. Will this relationship increase 
or diminish Japan's prestige as a world-power? 
In the balance of powers, which may become 
as important for the Far East as it has been 
important in Europe, will Japan through this 
suzerainty be able to secure a weight of in- 
fluence and of force which may constitute a 
peril for the peace of the world? Every lover 
of his race is concerned in the answer. The 
world is also watching the movement of Japan 
in Korea because of the growing belief that 
the process of uniting small nations with or 
into large has, with such exceptions as South 
America may offer in her republics, gone as 
far as it is well for it to go. United Italy, 
United Germany, have meant much to civili- 
zation. But the making of Korea into a pro- 
vince of Japan would represent the blotting 
out of an ancient people, and the absorption 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 35 

of its institutions into the institutions of 
another and an advancing people. Such an 
absorption could not prove to be an enrich- 
ment of the forces of the world's civiliza- 
tion. 

Yet one cannot but feel that Korea's doom 
as a nation is certain. The day of her national 
fate may be long deferred, but unless causes 
which have not yet appeared above the horizon 
emerge, it seems inevitable that she finally 
must cease to be an independent people even 
in name. She has sinned away her day of 
grace. Her little peninsula lies thrust down 
between Japan and China. Without ruling 
either, she has been dependent on both. To-day 
Japan is her master. To-morrow the mightier 
nation of China may control. 

I write these paragraphs on a voyage up 
the western coast of Korea on my way to 
China. The hills are bare, the rocks precipi- 
tous, and the islands barren. The scene is 
desolate and forbidding. The panorama seems 
to be a figure of the probable future of the 
hermit kingdom. 



36 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

IN INDIA 

India's problem is the problem of discon- 
tent. India is becoming discontented with 
English rale and tired of the Englishman. 
This condition approaches disaffection, and 
in some parts borders on sedition. Another 
"mutiny" is by some prophesied. How deep 
or how widespread is this discontent is not 
known, and no system of espionage seems 
able to discover. This feeling arises from 
permanent causes. Special causes augment 
the unrest, and they deserve weighing, yet 
they are not deeply significant. These special 
causes are found largely in the last months 
of Lord Curzon's great administration. That 
administration was great, great in achieve- 
ment, greater in promise; and yet its close 
was marked by some blunders which will for 
decades seriously impair its beneficence. In 
these blunders lie the immediate origins of 
the unrest. 

The impression was made by Lord Curzon 
that he desired to limit university privileges, 



THE PKOBLEM OF THE EAST 37 

rights, and opportunities for Indian students. 
The special point was that the Viceroy wished 
to curtail the number of men who might re- 
ceive the first degree of B. A. at the universi- 
ties of India. The fact that this interpretation 
was not a correct understanding of the purpose 
of the Viceroy did not at all serve to lessen 
its evil influence in stirring the national heart. 
Curzon's purpose was not to lessen the number 
of liberally educated and degree-bearing men, 
but rather to improve the quality of the edu- 
cation which they were getting, and to increase 
the value of the degree which they were re- 
ceiving. But through some unhappiness of 
statement the impression was made that it 
was the purpose of the governing powers to 
limit the opportunities for the higher educa- 
tion. 

A second cause lay also in a certain, at 
least, infelicity of statement (to use a weak 
word) of the Viceroy. In an address he made 
at the convocation of the University of Cal- 
cutta, in 1905, a contrast was drawn between 
the honesty, truthfulness, and similar virtues 



38 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

of the students and peoples of the West and 
the lack of these same virtues in the peoples of 
Asia. The intimation thus suggested awakened 
deep and widespread indignation. Whether 
the intimation was or is true or false need 
not be discussed, but its simple making was 
sufficient to stir the hearts of the academic 
and general community. 

A third cause, which was largely or wholly 
political, as were the first two academic, was 
the division of the province of Bengal into 
two provinces for administrative purposes. 
The Bengalese are a homogeneous people, of 
the number of the population of the United 
States. It may have been expedient or neces- 
sary for governmental reasons to separate a 
population of eighty millions into two bodies. 
But the methods which were used in effecting 
this great division awakened intense and bitter 
feeling. " Partition Day " is still celebrated as 
a day of humiliation. 

These three causes have served to empha- 
size the permanent conditions which result in 
political and social discontent. These perma- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 39 

nent conditions are still more significant and 
impressive. 

The first and more evident cause lies in the 
natural desire of a people for self-government. 
It has been said of the Koreans that they 
desire to be in subjection to some superior 
power. The remark is probably false. If at 
all true, Korea is the first nation of impor- 
tance which desired to be a subject nation. 
India, through her hundreds of tribes and 
clans, desires to rule herself. The desire is hu- 
man, natural, inevitable. This desire has been 
increased by the study of English constitu- 
tional and political history. This study is 
among the most common subjects of the 
schools and colleges. England has not been 
afraid to teach the truth regarding the growth 
of political freedom to this subject race. I 
have heard the president of a college in Cal- 
cutta discuss Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
with his senior students. Such lessons are 
as the seeds of democracy. 

A second cause of unrest lies in the in- 
creasing ability of the people for governing 



40 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

themselves. Of this increasing ability they 
themselves are conscious, and of the growth 
of this power there can be no doubt. Whether 
this power has become sufficiently great to 
allow self-government is the vital question, 
about which those who have a right to an 
opinion differ. But the point of the conten- 
tion is that this ability, even if still insuf- 
ficient to permit self-government, is growing, 
and this simple growth is an ample cause of 
unrest. India no longer represents a remote 
paganism. All, or many, of the material forces 
of civilization move over her plains, through 
the streets of her cities, and in the homes of 
her people. Steam railroads, street railroads, 
telegraphs, telephones, and electric lights are 
more common than in Spain or even Italy. 
The intellectual forces, too, are not wanting. 
Calcutta has more bookshops and larger ones 
than Boston. Within less than a mile of Col- 
lege Square, Calcutta, are at least three thou- 
sand college students. Colleges and schools 
preparatory to them, established by the gov- 
ernment, by missionary organization, and by 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 41 

private beneficence, are numerous and, be it 
added, some of them are of an architectural 
impressiveness — such as Muir College at Al- 
lahabad and the Martiniere College at Luck- 
now — which is seldom seen in the United 
States. All that education represents, England 
is giving, directly, or indirectly, to India. 
The gift bears richer knowledge, increased 
intellectual discipline, enlarged judgment, 
more facile power of concentration. Keceiving 
these noblest advantages, the leaders of the 
people realize their increased ability for self- 
government, and are restless at the closing of 
the door of opportunity for exercising it. 

A still further reason exists, which is, in 
a way, the very opposite of the cause just 
named : the general and profound ignorance 
of the people. How general and how deep 
this ignorance still is seems incomprehensible. 
In round numbers, out of India's more than 
three hundred millions, of the men, not more 
than ten in a hundred can read and write, 
and of the women, not more than seven in 
a thousand. This most significant fact is 



42 



EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 



made yet more impressive by a statement of 
the illiteracy in the several provinces. 



Province on State. 



Burma .... 
Travancore . . 
Baroda .... 
Madras .... 
Bombay . . . 
Bengal . . . . 
Mysore .... 
Berar .... 
Assam .... 
Punjab .... 
Rajputana . . . 
United Provinces 
Central India . . 
Hyderabad . . 
Central Provinces 
Kashmir . , . 



No. of Persons per 1000 

ABLE TO READ AND WRITE. 

Males. Females. 

378 45 

215 31 

163 8 

119 9 

116 9 

104 5 

93 8 

85 3 

67 4 

64 3 

62 2 

57 2 

55 3 

55 3 

54 2 

38 1 



The simple fact is that India is still a nation 
of illiterates. Now illiteracy is not in itself so 
bad a thing as is commonly believed ; but the 
significance of illiteracy is an even worse thing 
than is commonly thought. Illiteracy stands 
for narrowness of intellectual outlook, preju- 
dice, superstition, unreasonableness. Such con- 
ditions obtain in India as results of her illiteracy 
and allied deficiencies. Such results in turn 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 43 

become causes of unrest. To illustrate : if 
there be one thing in which England could 
justly be happy, it is her endeavor to pro- 
mote the health of this people. Plagues and 
"the plague" she has sought to stamp out, 
and has largely succeeded. In this suppression 
she has built many hospitals. In one city in 
which a plague hospital was built, and to 
which the victims of the disease, to prevent 
its spreading, were brought, the people got 
the idea that the English doctors were collect- 
ing these sick folks as messengers in order 
to send out the disease all over the country. 
Concentration, it was thought, meant dissemi- 
nation of the evil. People thus ignorant, pre- 
judiced, placed in a community more or less 
modern, cannot but promote social and other 
restlessness. 

A fourth cause of unrest lies in what one 
may call the lack of sympathy of the English 
residents of India with the native peoples. 
I have purposely selected a comprehensive 
phrase, lack of sympathy, to represent the 
relation of the governing to the governed 



44 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

class. In some cases this lack of sympathy 
becomes absolute despising, even resulting 
in physical suffering. From this lowest point 
it rises, through various degrees of indiffer- 
ence, to respectful remoteness. But, with few 
exceptions, the Englishman bears himself to- 
ward the East Indian as superior to inferior. I 
am not saying that the Englishman is or is not 
superior, — of course, as a class he is. But, 
despite this difference, it would be possible 
for the superior to have and to show more 
sympathy for and with the native. This need, 
be it added, is one to which the Prince of 
Wales alluded in an address made on his return 
from his recent visit to India. The substance 
of all this interpretation is that the East In- 
dian, finding no sympathy for himself on the 
part of his governors, is inclined toward dis- 
satisfaction with their government. Of course, 
one may say that it is not the function of gov- 
ernors to show sympathy with their subjects ; 
of course, also, one may add that it is not the 
nature of the Englishman to show sympathy. 
To the first remark one may reply in saying 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 45 

that sympathy might possibly add to the justice 
of the government of Englishmen, through 
a more complete understanding; and to the 
second remark it is sufficient to say that the 
Indian administration of the great Lord Ripon 
proves both the fact and the value of sympathy 
in the government of subject peoples. 

Moreover, beneath this quartet of lasting 
causes of discontent lies the great sense of 
national consciousness. This sense increases 
and deepens. The belief that India ? with her 
population of three hundred millions, though 
divided by differences in religion and in lan- 
guage, is one, — one in place, one in destiny, 
— is a belief which grows with the growing 
years. India for the Indians is an increas- 
ingly potent and persuasive rallying-cry. The 
cry is heard, with a certain note of shrill 
insistence, in native newspapers. It is felt 
in certain Christian missionary movements 
in which " Indian management, Indian men, 
and Indian money" represent the method and 
force of propagandism. It is further heard 
in private conversation. Nor is this note of 



46 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

national emphasis confined to the native 
people. It belongs to not a few Englishmen 
whose present home is in Calcutta, Madras, or 
Delhi. 

Yet this feeling of national consciousness 
among the Indians is one over which every 
great lover of humanity must rejoice. It re- 
presents life, vision, struggle. It intimates that 
lethargy, stagnation, is passing. India, like 
China, awakens. A nation takes a worthier 
place in the great brotherhood of nations, 
when the sense of its own integrity and in- 
dividuality is the keener and more adequate. 
"India for the Indians" is a method of trans- 
muting it into India for the world. 

England has for herself, both consciously 
and unconsciously, been the cause of this 
growth of national consciousness. It may be 
called either blameworthiness or credit, but 
the fact is clear enough. England has been 
the schoolmaster of India. She has built the 
schoolhouse, the college and university hall. 
She has introduced her own education, for 
better or for worse, into municipality and vil- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 47 

lage community. In method, in content of 
instruction, in administration, the education 
which England has offered India has been 
largely English education. Now the most 
fundamental note in such an education on its 
historical side has been and still is the note 
of political freedom. The history of England 
has fittingly formed a part of the course of 
study. The chief lesson, of many great lessons 
to be derived from such a study, is the lesson 
of the origin and growth of the principle of 
freedom in the state and for its citizens. Can 
any one for a moment think that such a lesson 
had no relation to England's Indian subjects ? 
Minds far less acute than the Hindu intellect 
could not be deaf or blind or unappreciative 
of such teaching. That political liberty is a 
growth, that civil conditions necessary for 
England might not be at all fitted to India, 
represent discriminations which might not be 
apprehended by the Indian mind. But the 
Indian mind did and still does believe that the 
liberty which is at once cause and result of 
England's greatness is also good for England's 



48 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

possession in Asia. Such a belief is one of the 
inevitable results of the education which Eng- 
land has offered and is offering her Indian 
subjects ; and such a belief also inevitably 
tends to deepen and to enlarge the national 
consciousness. 

This consciousness is also promoted by the 
industrial development of the country. The 
development is still feeble enough. But it is 
beginning. Its possibilities no one knows. For 
no proper scientific investigation has been 
made of the mineral resources. It is thought 
by some that these resources are exceedingly 
rich. But the very possibility of great wealth 
lying beneath the soil, together with the ac- 
tual establishment of some great iron and 
steel works, has been sufficient to promote 
somewhat the sense of the national conscious- 
ness. 

One can hardly close this interpretation 
without alluding to a somewhat singular phe- 
nomenon which constantly thrusts itself upon 
the observer. This phenomenon is the mani- 
festation, on the part of both Englishmen in 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 49 

India and the natives, of a keen consciousness 
of the anomalousness of England being at all 
in India. England is in India to-day because 
she was in India yesterday ; she will be in India 
to-morrow because she is there to-day. To the 
ordinary Indian or Englishman the historic 
reasons which have obliged — some would say 
obliged is too strong a word — England to 
come and to stay in India are not evident. 
On the face of the whole condition, both 
races would affirm that the white man does 
not belong in the land of the brown man. 
This self-consciousness is simply an intellec- 
tual interpretation and an emotional impression 
of this entire condition. The Indian talks 
and writes in his many vernacular newspapers 
regarding the Englishman in India. Appar- 
ently no phase is omitted. The English pa- 
pers are almost, if not quite, as free in the 
same racial, personal, and governmental discus- 
sion. The discussion seems curiously akin to 
the editorial writing on slavery printed in the 
Southern papers of the United States in the 
decade preceding the Civil War. 



50 EDUCATION IN THE FAK EAST 

IN EGYPT 

The Egyptian problem is not the problem 
of political independence, as the Nationalist 
party declares ; nor is it the problem of unit- 
ing all religions into one faith, be that faith 
Protestant, Coptic, or Mohammedan ; neither 
is it to develop more and other industries, as 
building railroads or factories to use up Egyp- 
tian cotton. Each of these purposes represents 
large and serious undertakings. The compre- 
hensive problem, however, of Egypt is three- 
fold: to increase the industrial and agricul- 
tural efficiency of the people, to ennoble the 
home, and to promote the confidence of the 
people in one another. These three elements 
may be embraced in a single principle, — the 
enlargement of the worth of every individual 
of the twelve millions forming the Egyptian 
nation. 

This problem, whether considered in its 
threefold or in its single relation, is the prob- 
lem of a better and more general education. 
An education better and more general would 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 51 

enlarge the worth of the individual ; it would 
also increase agricultural and industrial effi- 
ciency; it would contribute to the ennoble- 
ment of the family ; and it would, further, pro- 
mote the sense of mutual confidence. What 
other is the aim of education than the achieve- 
ment of such comprehensive and fundamental 
purposes ? 

The condition of education in all Moham- 
medan countries is bad. In both India and 
Egypt the condition is peculiarly wretched. 
The Mohammedan people have made their 
education narrowly religious. The education 
given by the Egyptian government is not so 
inefficient as that offered under the directly 
Mohammedan authorities; but the fact that 
for one dollar spent on education the govern- 
ment spends sixteen for other purposes, inti- 
mates the low estimate in which education 
languishes. Of eight dollars Prussia spends 
one for education and seven for all other 
purposes. Besides the governmental and the 
Mohammedan schools, are established various 
mission schools, both English and American. 



52 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Among the American schools those of the 
United Presbyterian Church are especially vig- 
orous and useful. 

The government is aware that it is not 
doing for and through education what ought 
to be done. The annual reports of Lord Cro- 
mer are constantly and movingly filled with 
the expressions of the educational duties rest- 
ing on the controlling authorities. There are 
two points to which education by the gov- 
ernment is particularly directed, primary and 
technical. Every child in Egypt should be 
taught to read, write, and cipher, and all or- 
dinary boys should be trained to be either 
good farmers, good carpenters, good black- 
smiths, or to follow other necessary trades. 
Some also should be trained as engineers, for 
the higher relationships of the great business 
of engineering. The need of engineers in 
Egypt is not great. Egypt is and must remain 
primarily an agricultural country. It cannot 
become primarily an industrial community, 
despite the claims of the Nationalist party. 
It lacks coal. A cotton factory has lately been 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 63 

torn down and its machinery sent out of the 
country. Manchester can sell goods in Cairo 
and Luxor cheaper than Cairo or Luxor can 
make them. But Egypt, being such an agri- 
cultural country as it is, and the eternal and 
omnipresent Nile present serious problems of 
irrigation. For thousands of years these prob- 
lems of irrigation have been the principal en- 
gineering problems, and principal they will 
continue to be. The Polytechnic School lo- 
cated halfway between the city of Cairo and 
the Pyramid of Cheops is, chiefly under Eng- 
lish supervision, making good engineers. 

The greatest development on the industrial 
side of education is found in the trade-schools. 
These schools are established in Cairo and 
other centres, and the government is seeking 
to establish many others. These schools train 
machinists, carpenters, painters, and workmen 
of other trades. The boys enter at an early 
age. As a class they are apt, interested, and 
fairly efficient. The practical aim dominates, 
and practical methods prevail. In a school of 
Cairo, which I found efficiently administered, 



54 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

one element seemed to be especially promi- 
nent : the putting the boys to work in rilling 
actual orders for goods, — cabinets, saddles, 
postmen's bags, wagons, and street letter-boxes. 
The money thus earned, though actually small, 
seemed to serve to quicken the interest of the 
boys in their work, and not at all to limit their 
immediate efficiency or their future worth. 

In these manual schools and, in fact, in 
all schools, the government finds difficulty 
in securing a sufficient number of properly 
trained teachers. Egypt thus suffers as does 
China. Normal schools are established, but 
the number of graduates does not fill the in- 
creasing needs. The desire for education all 
over the world, indeed, goes far beyond the 
means of satisfying it. The need, too, of 
teachers of large character and of advanced 
training seems to be quite as urgent as the 
need of a greater number of teachers. 

Education in Egypt of every grade labors 
under the heavy difficulty of the tradition of 
an evil method. The tradition represents the 
dominance of the memory. To learn without 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 65 

reasoning has long been the popular method. 
Knowledge, not training, not power, has re- 
presented, and still represents, the educational 
ideal. The pupils as the pail, the school as the 
pump, the teacher at the pump handle, and 
the water of the well as knowledge, form the 
correct metaphor. This method has been so 
long used that the interest of the boy in sci- 
ences and in scientific reasoning is small. Not 
for one moment, however, is it to be doubted 
that the government schools, so far as they 
are established, are doing much to dethrone 
this educational idol and ideal of the pump, 
and are seeking to form, as well as to inform, 
the mind. 

The education of girls lags behind the edu- 
cation of boys in Egypt as in every oriental 
country, slow as the education of boys is. In 
Egypt, as in all the lands of Islam, the seclu- 
sion of women fundamentally interferes with 
their education. As soon as girls reach the 
age of ten or twelve, they are shut up in their 
homes. In the homes of their parents they 
remain virtual prisoners till they enter the 



56 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

homes of their husbands, in which the im- 
prisonment continues. The condition, both 
filial and conjugal, is a sad one for the better- 
ment of civilization. The Mohammedan home 
is a pretty sorry affair. Polygamy may dese- 
crate its conjugal sacredness, and the seclu- 
sion of the purdah, even if there be only one 
wife, does not well prepare a woman to be- 
come a mother of sons. Not simply for their 
own happiness, but also and more for the 
proper bringing up of children, the education 
of women should be promoted. The prolonga- 
tion of the period of that education would be 
one method of its improvement. Such pro- 
longation would necessarily result in the ele- 
vation of the home, and the elevation of the 
home would necessarily result in the lifting 
of society in its fundamental relationships. 

It cannot be doubted, too, that education 
would increase the confidence of the people 
of Egypt in one another. For education could 
not but result in making the people more 
worthy of confidence. Education promotes 
intellectual accuracy. Intellectual accuracy 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EAST 57 

aids ethical honesty; and ethical honesty 
fosters general moral integrity. Education en- 
larges the conception of integrity as the basis 
of all social and economic concerns. The 
extension, therefore, and deepening of the ed- 
ucational movement will vastly aid the Egyp- 
tian farmer, merchant, and workman to appre- 
ciate and to practice the cardinal virtues. 

Lord Cromer adopted finance as the basis 
for the improvement of Egypt. In the crisis 
in which he entered upon his great work, a 
quarter of a century ago, the adoption of 
that basis was inevitable. But for the future, 
and as a permanent method for the solution 
of the great present problems of the land of 
the Pharaohs, education is the basis. 



JAPAN 



II 

THE JAPANESE MIND 

The Japanese mind is a mind plus a heart. 
It is less pure intellect than most minds, it is 
more emotional. It is less philosophic but 
more practical than the German ; it is more 
facile but less profound in its workings than 
the English; it is less practical but more 
philosophic than the American mind. Its pro- 
cesses are rapid and superficial. The results 
of its operations are best interpreted in terms 
of sentiment. Of the two comprehensive types 
of mind, the logical and imaginative, it clearly 
belongs to the imaginative. It thinks in pic- 
tures, in individual images rather than in 
prolonged and closely related reasonings. It 
prefers concrete to abstract language. Its 
power of illustration, of individualizing, is 
superior to its power of generalizing. 

The Japanese mind, as I have intimated, is 
not a mind inclined to prolonged logical 



62 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

reasonings. It is changeable. The people 
have been called inconstant, unstable, fickle. 
The mind I would not call fickle, but it pre- 
fers much variety of subject for its reflections 
to a single closely compacted topic of thought. 
It seems to lack greatness, as the stature of 
the race lacks size. It is agile, alert. Its 
agility and alertness arise from what may be 
called its lightness: the swallow turns where 
the eagle cannot. It moves rapidly, and hav- 
ing the defects of its excellences, it does not 
move profoundly. A professor of one of the 
great universities, having been for many years 
a teacher in Japan, has said to me, "No Jap- 
anese ever really thinks." The remark may 
be too extreme, but it is significant. Yet it is 
a mind of the type which the metaphysicians 
call subjective; it turns in upon itself; it is 
concerned with its own operations. It is not 
a scientific mind. It observes the phenomena 
of nature far less than it studies its own con- 
stitution. But these studies are of the heart 
as well as of the intellect. The mind feels 
for itself ; it sentimentalizes about itself. 



THE JAPANESE MIND 63 

Because of this union of the heart and of 
the intellect in itself, the mind is a receptive 
one. All the avenues of its approach are wide 
open. It desires to take in much, and much 
it does take in. Facts, truths, ideas are its 
food, and for such food it is constantly raven- 
ous. The lectures which the students of the 
universities and of the higher schools attend 
every week are many, many even to excess, 
amounting in most cases to twenty-five, thirty, 
and even more. Such intellectual extrava- 
gance arises from the earnestness of the men 
themselves. They are eager to know; they 
have not usually come to discriminate between 
knowledge and power, — between the mind as 
an intellectual granary and the mind as an 
intellectual engine. They have not learned that 
education is really educative, — a drawing out, 
and not a filling in. They need to learn that re- 
ceptiveness is by no means reflectiveness, and 
that memorizing is not necessarily thinking. 

The Japanese mind is also a mind which 
likes rules, formulas, precedents. It approves 
of systems ; and its operations easily become 



64 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

systematic. Before a new, a unique crisis, it is 
in peril of standing blind and deaf and dumb. 
It fails to appreciate unknown conditions, and 
it is liable to have no hand to guide or to lift 
and no will to inspire. When the rulers of the 
people came to know that the nation had fallen 
behind advancing nations of the West in the 
progress of civilization, it turned for light 
and for strength not to itself, as did Germany 
at the close of the Napoleonic era, but to 
America and to Europe. The method was as 
wise as it was inevitable. The navy is Eng- 
lish, the army German and French, the edu- 
cational system German and American. The 
mind lacks initiative, independence. It is imi- 
tative. The universities brought in foreign 
professors ; and as one by one they returned 
to their homes in America, England, Ger- 
many, their places were filled by native-born 
teachers ; the students had learned their les- 
sons, and were able, becoming teachers them- 
selves, to follow out the precedents set and 
the methods prescribed. 

The Japanese mind has not had the advan- 



THE JAPANESE MIND 65 

tage of receiving what the Anglo-Saxon mind 
has had for four hundred years, the " Greek 
bath," as Hegel terms it. In its place it has 
had the Chinese bath. It has substituted Con- 
fucius for Plato and Aristotle. It has taken 
a series of ideographs instead of the most per- 
fect and scientific language which the world 
has yet made. In learning this language, in 
studying this literature, — replete as it is with 
wise maxims, and interpretative as I know 
it to be of many of the moods of the human 
soul, — it has found special exercise for the 
memory. It has not thus received a training in 
discrimination, in appreciation. That general 
enlargement of the mind, that enrichment of 
the intellect, that cultivation of the whole 
man, which Greek has given for hundreds 
of years and to the leaders of the progressive 
peoples, the Japanese mind has lacked and 
lacks still. 

The Japanese mind is, also, at once moral 
and unmoral. It has a fondness, both intel- 
lectual and emotional, for moral abstract truth, 
but it also has not inspired the people to 



66 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

moral practice. The Japanese mind likes a dis- 
cussion, even more indeed than the American, 
— and that is much, — and it especially likes 
a discussion about ethical sanctions, defini- 
tions, discriminations. No subject is so con- 
stantly taught in all the schools as ethics. Yet 
the application of ethics to life seems remote. 
The two great fields for the application of 
ethical precepts seem peculiarly needy in Ja- 
pan, — business and the family. That the com- 
mercial morality of the nation is improving, 
that sexual morality is becoming more pure, 
does not prevent one from saying that dis- 
honesty and trickery are woefully common, 
and that the family relation commands, on the 
whole, small respect. The foreign tradesman 
is obliged to inspect his purchase, whether it 
be a yard or a bale, with care. The defect 
may be deftly hidden ; and when discovered 
and brought to the notice of the seller, it 
awakens surprise and apology ; a surprise and 
apology which are apparently conventional. 

An illustration of the doubt which the 
Japanese themselves have of the honesty of 



THE JAPANESE MIND 67 

their countrymen has just been told me. An 
American author, of great distinction, freely 
gave to an educational association the manu- 
script of a course of lectures which he had 
delivered to Japanese teachers, for the pur- 
pose of publication. This association was un- 
willing to entrust the publication to any 
Japanese publisher, for fear that he would not 
make for copyright purposes a correct state- 
ment of the number of copies sold. 

Likewise in the family. The importance of 
the family to society, and to the whole social 
order, does not prevent about one half of all 
the domestic unions of the common people 
from being not legalized by due process and 
form, and also does not prevent about one 
third of all marriages, formal or informal, 
from resulting in divorce or separation. Ethics 
has not yet been so impressed upon the people 
as to prevent or to stop most serious domestic 
and social evils. Ethics has been deficient in 
impressing the great formal and social duty 
of chastity. Sexual purity is a lesson of which 
the teaching should be made more impressive, 



68 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

and of which the learning should be made 
more constant and thorough. 

The Japanese mind, therefore, is a mind 
moral, in its theoretical interpretation of 
ethical truth, and unmoral in the application 
of this truth. The nation is really an unmoral 
nation as compared to the noblest ethical 
standards of the Christian nations of the 
West. 

The Japanese mind, like the nation, is still 
in the evolutionary process. It needs, what it 
will receive, growth. The whole intellectual 
level of the people is not as high as that of 
the peoples of the West. The intellectual 
power of the greatest men of Japan is nearer 
the height of the intellectual attainments of 
the greatest men of the West than is the in- 
tellectual level of the Japanese people near 
the intellectual level of the Anglo-Saxon 
peoples. But, as the colored boy said to 
Howard at Atlanta, "We are rising." The 
struggle of nature for thousands of years has 
been to make brain. That struggle is most 
vigorous in Japan ; it needs to be. That 



THE JAPANESE MIND 69 

struggle will go on ; and in the decades and 
the centuries, it will bring forth, under good 
conditions, great popular forces both static 
and dynamic. 



Ill 

SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS OF 
JAPANESE AND AMERICAN 
EDUCATION 

Aside from the common and essential ele- 
ments which belong alike to all systems of 
education, one element is found in both the 
American and Japanese system : it is the fun- 
damental element of profound respect for edu- 
cation on the part of both nations. In both 
countries education has come to be regarded 
as the most important part of the national life. 
In 1872 a proclamation made by the new 
Emperor declared : " All knowledge, from that 
necessary for daily life to that higher know- 
ledge necessary to prepare officers, farmers, 
mechanics, artisans, physicians, etc., for their 
respective vocations, is acquired by learning. 
It is designed henceforth that education shall 
be so diffused that there may not be a village 
with an ignorant family, nor a family with an 
ignorant member." In the year of 1890, the 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 71 

Emperor also issued what is now known as, 
" The Imperial Kescript on Education." It is 
so named, although it might also be called 
a rescript concerning the ethical virtues ; but 
the spirit of education is the atmosphere 
which breathes through each sentence. For 
in "virtue," declares his Majesty, "lies the 
source of our Education," as well as "the 
glory of the fundamental character of our 
Empire." His Majesty also commands that 
"our subjects" are to "pursue learning and 
cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual 
faculties and perfect moral powers." These 
two imperial writings have been and still con- 
tinue to be an inspiring force in the progress 
of education. The Emperor, by his personal 
and royal example in attending the commence- 
ment exercises at the University of Tokyo 
and of other schools, and by inviting teachers 
in the public schools to his palace on special 
occasions, has proved his great and abiding 
interest in this form of, and this force for } 
civilization. These proclamations are akin to 
the immortal utterances of Washington re- 



72 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

garding the importance o£ education in a 
republic. 

It should also be said that this interest of 
both nations comes to its head in the members 
of the teaching profession themselves. 

Teachers in both Japan and the United 
States are deeply absorbed in their work. The 
members of no profession devote so much at- 
tention to their professional improvement. 
The teachers of Japan know that they — like 
their nation — are new, and they show in 
many ways the desire to profit from the re- 
sults secured by peoples of larger and richer 
experience. These teachers are both men and 
women. In America more than four fifths of 
all the teachers in the public schools are women; 
in Japan more than four fifths are men. The 
proportion of women teaching in Japan in- 
creases, as it does in some American states. 
In the year 1900-01, of 91,798 Japanese pub- 
lic school-teachers, only 11,910 were women; 
but in 1904-05, from 101,272 teachers, almost 
20,000 — 19,790— were women. The two 
countries are concerned with opposite sides of 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 73 

the same problem: in America the number 
of men teaching in the schools should be in- 
creased and the number of women diminished ; 
in Japan the number of women should be in- 
creased and the number of men diminished. 

A contrast which strikes one in the public 
education, — to proceed from the outer to the 
inner part, and from the " lower education " 
to the " higher," is the character of the school- 
houses themselves. Many of these houses, like 
most Japanese buildings, are built of wood. 
Laf cadio Hearn writes of Japanese architecture 
as being characterized by " impermanence." 
The Japanese schoolhouse is a frail structure ; 
its timbers small, its walls, of boards or clap- 
boards, thin, its floors weak. The construction 
seems loose. From first floor to the shingled 
roof of the second story, a general air of in- 
stability pervades. In the whole building is 
found no intimation of that strength which 
belongs to the brick or stone schoolhouse of 
the American city, large or small. It must also 
be said that what we like to call " beauty " is 
quite as lacking as strength. Though Ameri- 



74 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

cans overcrowd their houses with " ornaments " 
and furniture, yet the Japanese walls are bare 
almost to barrenness, and the benches rough. 
In one respect, however, and that most im- 
portant, is a happy element to be found, — 
the management of the light of each room. 
The windows are large, set on one wall usually, 
and the light falls over the left shoulder of 
the seated pupil. 

One of the most evident problems which 
American and Japanese institutions situated 
in the city — and most Japanese higher insti- 
tutions are in a city — have in common, is 
the problem of getting land for buildings. 
Not long before his death, Provost Pepper, 
of the University of Pennsylvania, walking 
over the grounds of Western Reserve Uni- 
versity, said to me, " Get land." The remark 
grew out of his own experience. The remark 
may be made a command for most urban in- 
stitutions in both Japan and America. The 
University of Tokyo has about one hundred 
acres for its fifty and more buildings. The 
sister university at Kyoto is not cramped. 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 75 

The great institution of the Methodist Church 
at Tokyo has some twenty-four acres. But 
most colleges and schools are poor in land. 
The Waseda University at Tokyo, of some 
eight thousand students, the Doshisha at Ky- 
oto, of eight hundred, the Japan Women's 
University, of fourteen hundred, and also the 
Presbyterian schools, all at Tokyo, and many 
others, do not have room to grow. What 
renders the limitations more serious is that 
the price of land in the great towns has in- 
creased by such leaps and bounds that to 
make purchases at present would require 
twenty or in some cases even fifty times the 
price originally asked. 

This problem of the budget has relations 
also to larger appropriations for libraries, for 
scientific apparatus, for keeping buildings 
clean and well repaired and grounds aestheti- 
cally beautiful. In these several and diverse 
respects, Japanese universities and colleges 
are sympathetic with American. But in re- 
spect to books the Japanese institutions labor 
under a double disadvantage. For they are 



76 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

obliged to buy not only all the proper books 
of their own writing, but also all those of Eng- 
lish, German, and French authorship which 
relate to the great scholastic subjects and 
movements. The best library, that of the Uni- 
versity of Tokyo, is as good as the better col- 
lege libraries of America, but by no means 
approaches the best, such as those of Har- 
vard, Columbia, and Yale. The lack of proper 
appropriations is evident also in the untidi- 
ness of the academic housekeeping. Build- 
ings are not clean. " What is your greatest 
problem?" an American college president was 
asked. " To get floors washed often enough," 
was his answer. The same problem exists in 
the universities of Japan, and it is not an- 
swered so well as in those of America. Japan's 
reputation, too, for fine gardens and landscape 
architecture is depreciated through the lack 
of plan and of care manifest in most college 
grounds. The contrast between Tokyo and 
Kyoto and Oxford and Cambridge is painful ; 
but the contrast also between the Japanese 
and many American universities would be alto- 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 77 

gether in favor of the American. The reason 
lies back in the budget. 

In passing, it may be added that the Jap- 
anese colleges , like the American, have in the 
past paid little attention to the counsels of 
either the landscape or the building architect. 
The location of buildings has been too much 
like the location of the Thousand Islands in 
the St. Lawrence, haphazard, and the build- 
ings themselves lack both individual beauty 
and collective impressiveness. 

Japan is also struggling with the problem 
of America in respect to big academic names 
for small academic institutions. The name 
" university" is given to an institution which 
off ers instruction less advanced and of no better 
quality than the " higher normal school " of 
Japan gives. Institutions put forth " claims " 
which represent hopes rather than present 
values. The traditional self-restraint of the 
nation is not manifest in its academic am- 
bition. 

The salaries of teachers are, also, small, as 
are the fees of students. In the higher ele- 



78 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

mentary schools the largest salaries for men 
are about ten dollars a month, and for women 
about seven dollars. In the last four years 
hese stipends have increased, but only by in- 
considerable amounts. In Japan, as in the 
United States, a good carpenter receives a 
larger wage than a good elementary school- 
teacher. The professors in both of the Im- 
perial Universities, as well as the teachers in 
many higher schools, have spoken freely to 
me of the hardships arising from their small 
stipends. These stipends run from five hun- 
dred to twelve hundred dollars. For foreign- 
ers the amounts are double or triple these 
sums. But such salaries are entirely inadequate. 
The Japanese style of living is simple. But 
house-rent is seldom less than fifteen dollars 
a month, and readily becomes thirty or forty 
dollars. The price of rice has rapidly and 
greatly advanced. It was never so high as to- 
day. The Japanese professor is finding his 
economic burden quite as heavy as is the 
American. 

But this low rate of compensation is some- 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 79 

■what relieved, though only in part, by a gov- 
ernmental pension system. 

The pension system for public school-teach- 
ers has gained a more general prevalence in 
lapan than in the United States. Its progress 
in the United States, especially in the large 
cities, in the last ten years has been great ; 
but the larger part of the half million of 
teachers in the whole country are not its bene- 
ficiaries. The Japanese teacher is an official 
of the government; and as such is entitled to 
a grant on retirement. Teachers formerly in 
the elementary and secondary schools, to the 
number of more than five thousand, are now 
in receipt of pensions. These benefits are also 
continued to the families of teachers who 
have died. The amounts thus granted vary 
from about one fifth to one third of the sal- 
ary formerly received. 

An important element, at once a contrast 
and a likeness, is found in the studies which 
are pursued in both lower and higher schools. 
The same studies are found in the Japanese 
schools which are set in the corresponding 



80 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

American schools, barring certain marked ex- 
ceptions. Neither Latin nor Greek is studied. 
The civilization of the Far East is progress- 
ing without immediate reference to the classi- 
cal traditions which have mightily influenced 
Western development. In them is found, of 
course, the Japanese language and literature, 
and also, in some, the Chinese language. The 
study of ethics is pursued also far more con- 
stantly than in the schools of Western nations. 
In the teaching of arithmetic the soroban, or 
abacus, is used. But with these rather impres- 
sive differences the curricula of the two sys- 
tems are much alike. 

The same subjects of study are, moreover, 
either popular or unpopular in the Japanese in- 
stitution and in the American. The social sci- 
ences and history represent the more, and the 
mathematical sciences the less, popular. The 
Japanese mind is not a mathematical mind. It 
is not exact. Mathematics is not taught in any 
Japanese university to the extent in which it 
is taught in the best American colleges. There 
is little or no demand for the higher or the 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 81 

newer developments of the great subject. But 
political economy, sociology, the science of gov- 
ernment, politics, represent topics in which the 
Japanese mind has intense interest. The same 
condition obtains in America. 

The teachers of Japan are laboring with the 
question upon which American teachers are 
working, namely, the question of getting stu- 
dents to think. There is no difficulty in get- 
ting Japanese students to learn. The faculty 
of the memory is strong. The difficulty is to 
persuade students to learn less and to think 
more. Many students have not come to dis- 
tinguish between these important functions. 
But teachers are becoming aware; for the loss 
which their students are incurring in sacrific- 
ing reflectiveness to acquisitiveness is con- 
stant and serious. The way of meeting this 
difficulty is still pretty obscure in both Japan 
and America. But one Japanese professor in- 
dicated a method which he believed had al- 
ready proved to be of value. It lay in an ex- 
amination not upon questions which related 
to the content of a subject, but which related 



82 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

to the consideration of the problems of thaf 
subject. A student would be tested upon his 
thinking out and solving the problems which 
arise in a course of instruction. Such questions 
I know thousands of teachers in American col- 
leges prefer to set in an examination paper. 
Such questions it is hard to formulate; but 
such questions will become more common in 
both American and Japanese universities. 

There is need, however, aside from the method 
and content of examinations that students 
should be so impressed with the importance 
of thinking as compared to learning that they 
will compel themselves to think. More of the 
mathematical necessity of thinking should be 
felt by them. This necessity they will in time 
come to feel for themselves, as already their 
teachers are feeling it for them. 

A farther problem in which Japanese teach- 
ers as well as American are deeply concerned, 
is the giving of personal aid to students in 
the great interests of their lives. It is th( 
problem by what means and methods the char- 
acter of the teacher may be brought to bear 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 8? 

upon the character of the student. The diffi 
culty in the question arises from the great 
number of students and also from the work 
of the teacher in research. When one teacher 
has two hundred or four hundred students, he 
is usually prevented from giving much indi- 
vidual help to each. When, also, a professor 
is deeply interested in research, as he ought 
to be, and interested in publishing the results 
of his investigations, he feels he has little 
time or strength left for the individual stu- 
dent. The condition in both Japanese and 
American institutions is identical. The dor- 
mitory system, at least indirectly if not directly, 
allows some teachers opportunities for study- 
ing the personal life of students. But Tokyo 
transferred not long ago its few dormitories 
to the Medical Department for hospital wards. 
It is now without any. " It was a great mis- 
take," said a professor to me. Students' hos- 
tels under the charge of the Young Men'? 
Christian Association are doing much to meel 
this condition. The lack of opportunities open 
to the Japanese professor is greater than to 



84 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

the American. For the lecture system is far 
more common in Japan. The recitation sys- 
tem does give the teacher some little chance 
for making an inventory of the mind and 
heart of the student, and for discovering his 
point of view. But the Japanese college lec- 
ture is simply an academic address, in which 
practically no chance is open for the play and 
by-play of question and answer. Japanese 
professors, like the American, lament the con- 
dition, and are seeking a remedy ; but, so far, 
likewise, without worthy result. 

The great questions in Japan, as in Amer- 
ica, about which students crave counsel from 
their teachers, are ethical and religious ques- 
tions. Such questions are most vital, personal, 
serious. In Japan these questions are tremen- 
dously significant. For students in lifting 
their own lives and the lives of their fellow 
countrymen who are less favored out of moral 
unworthiness, need all the advice and inspira- 
tion which their teachers of widest experience 
and warmest regard can give. 

A contrast is to be found, and one, too, in 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 85 

favor of the Eastern nation, in respect to 
school attendance. At the present time more 
than ninety-five per cent of the Japanese 
children who are of the elementary school-age 
are attending school. In the United States 
the proportion differs much for the different 
commonwealths, from Massachusetts with its 
high average to the states of the Southwest ; 
but the national contrast is to the advantage 
of Japan. The percentage, too, is constantly 
rising. In the last six years in the elementary 
schools, it has risen from about eighty-one to 
more than ninety-five. The increase for girls 
exceeds that for boys. In 1890-91 about 
seventy-one per cent of the girls were in 
school, and ninety per cent of the boys ; in 
1905-06 the ratio had so changed that ninety- 
seven per cent of the boys and ninety-three 
per cent of the girls were in school. 

For most of these pupils, education is not 
free in the sense in which it is in American 
schools. Above the primary grades a fee is 
charged. The fee is ridiculously small, meas- 
ured by Western standards of value; but 



86 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

measured by Japanese standards, its aggre- 
gate represents a large income for the statec 
The Japanese home, be it said, seems willing 
to meet this small tax. In the higher primary- 
school the fee paid for each pupil each month 
runs from fifteen cents to thirty ; in the mid- 
dle (or grammar) school the fee is seldom less 
than fifty cents a month, or more than a dol- 
lar and twenty cents; in the high school it 
is ten dollars a year, and in the universities 
about eighteen dollars. Certain exemptions 
are made in cases of poverty. 

Passing from the more ordinary types of 
public school education to the form of the 
higher education, the same contrast is noted. 
Many higher schools are able to receive only 
a small proportion of the students who desire 
to enter. In ways either direct or indirect 
most American colleges seek for students. 
The higher schools of Japan have no need of 
conducting such a campaign. For most of 
them are full, too full, and clamoring appli- 
cants to the number of thousands find the 
academic gates shut in their faces. The uni- 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 87 

versities and what America would call col 
leges are few. The two universities of Tokyt 
and Kyoto are able to receive most appli- 
cants ; but the provision offered at the normal 
schools and some technical institutions is 
utterly inadequate. Of the more than twenty- 
two thousand applicants at the normal schools 
last year, less than five thousand were re- 
ceived. In certain individual schools only one 
applicant in ten is admitted. In some medical 
schools a similar proportion of admissions to 
applications prevails. The Japanese govern- 
ment has so far been unable to offer sufficient 
facilities for the higher education of her 
people ; every year either old institutions are 
enlarged or new ones founded. In the com- 
ing year four new scientific schools or col- 
leges will be opened. Japanese young men 
look upon education as the ladder leading 
to the richest opportunities and the highes' 
achievements. Year after year, only a hun- 
dred out of a thousand applicants to some 
schools are received. The test is made by ex- 
amination. Those who are rejected, it may be 



88 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

added, represent in Japan a contingent which 
proves to be a cause of watchfulness to the 
police force of Tokyo and other great towns. 
Unwilling to return to their homes in the 
country, lean in purse, loath to do the homely 
work which may offer, they are a pregnant 
cause of social peril. 

In Japan, as in America, the student of 
slender purse, but high ambition, is common. 
The methods used for aiding him in Japan 
are unlike those employed in America. In 
America the college to which he goes aids 
by grants of money, or by securing oppor- 
tunities of self- support. The record which 
almost every college could publish is a noble 
one. But in Japan the aid is usually given 
by the locality in which the student lives. 
There are more than a hundred student aid 
societies. They are largely maintained by the 
wealthier people of the province or neighbor- 
hood. One of these societies, which is prob- 
ably the best endowed, has a fund of about 
$350,000. The aid is given usually in the 
form of loans, running from about $2.50 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 89 

to $5.00 a month. Even the larger amount 
would not be called extravagant ; but when it 
is remembered that for one hundred dollars a 
student can meet all his expenses for a year 
at one of the higher institutions, the amount 
may be deemed liberal. 

For the cost of education seems small, very 
small. The following is the estimate made by 
one of the private universities for each year 
of a course of five years : — 

Tuition fee $18.00 

Room rent (11 mo.) 19.25 

Classroom charge 1.50 

Physical training 1.50 

Board (11 mo.) 33.00 

Books, stationery, etc 30.00 

$103.25 

This estimate, I believe, the catalogue of 
our American college, in its ordinary state- 
ment of the different types of students' ex- 
penses, would describe as " economical ! " For 
in the American college the corresponding 
charges which the student would meet would 
be for tuition from $100 to $150, for board 
and room from $175 to $400 or more, and 
for incidentals a sum far in excess of the 



90 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

$ 100, which the Japanese student spends for 
\11 items. The best education, secured under 
;he best conditions, would, therefore, cost at 
least one fourth and probably one tenth as 
much in Tokyo or Kyoto as in New York, or 
New Haven, or Cambridge. Of course, the 
difference could easily be made much greater. 
The many Japanese men and the few Japa- 
nese women who have come to American col- 
leges deeply feel this difference in expense. 

This difference has a material expression 
in the rooms of the students. The room of 
a Japanese student is small, — being seldom 
more than an eight mat room (each mat is six 
feet by three) and usually smaller. It is rather 
unfurnished than furnished. The floor is the 
bed, and the simple bedding in the daytime is 
rolled up and tucked away in a drawer. The 
floor is the chair, too, as well as the bedstead. 
A small low table is, with a few books, the 
only piece of furniture. All the belongings of 
many a student I have seen wrapped together 
in a blanket. I must say that such a room 
seems to be almost as lacking in comfort to 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 91 

the Japanese student as it is in necessaries to 
the American. But the Japanese student does, 
I am sure, find comfort as well as necessaries 
in this simplest provision. He is the child of 
such an environment. He does not miss what 
he never had. And be it ever said that the 
Japanese student, like the Japanese soldier, 
can do good work on rice and dried fish, and 
that, too, with not a large quantity of either. 
Out of the comparative poverty and, also, 
out of the ambition of the Japanese student, 
arises the element of work. On the whole, 
he takes more lectures in a week than the 
American in a fortnight or possibly three 
weeks. But if he studies or listens more, he 
thinks less ; and no man at any college in the 
New World thinks too much. If in laborious- 
ness he be superior to his brother in America, 
in moral practice he is distinctly inferior. He 
is far more akin to the French student of the 
Latin Quarter than to the American. In this 
respect he is sympathetic with his nation. For 
to the whole people moral standards are lack- 
ing ; they are less immoral than unmoral. 



92 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

What seems to the occidental conscience wrong 
may seem to the oriental to have no moral 
quality at all. But the Christian principles of 
the West are beginning to affect the Japanese 
nation ; and in no class have they become so 
pervasive as among the students. The work 
of the Young Men's Christian Association, as 
well as of the churches, merits the warmest 
commendation. 

The Japanese student, moreover, like the 
American, has his undergraduate life. Sports 
are common, of which archery and baseball 
are popular. Football is not played to any ex- 
tent, and probably will not be. It does not seem 
to partake of that gracious deference which 
characterizes student life, as all life, in Japan ! 
There are few clubs and social organizations, 
but they are more usually formed upon the 
basis of the province whence came the men to 
the universities than on the ground of per- 
sonal likings. The geographical principle pre- 
vailing at Upsala is followed to a degree in 
Tokyo. But, in general, the universities man- 
ifest more of the manners and customs of the 



SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS 93 

American professional school than of the un- 
dergraduate college. The pressure of the forth- 
coming life is vividly felt. That life is strenu- 
ous, and the undergraduate sympathizes with 
its demands. 

To one more contrast I must refer. It is the 
greater orderliness of the Japanese student. 
Academic life in Japan has little of those 
tomfooleries which are characterized as either 
delightful, or disgusting, natural to youth, or 
outrageous, according to preconceived stand- 
ards. At all events, Japanese students are 
not much given to play. As citizens of the 
state they are obedient to its civil officers, so 
as members of an academic society they con- 
duct themselves with propriety. They mind 
their academic business. Any noisy procession 
of them would probably be at once dispersed 
by the police, even if it were allowed to form. 
A theft of a barber's pole would result in ar- 
rest and punishment. Disturbance at a theatre 
would not be suffered. The Japanese student 
by nature seems to lack the enthusiastic spirit 
of the American. The task of the police force 



94 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

is always an easier one than it would be in 
Cambridge on the occasion of a great football 
victory over Yale. 

Whether the American school is more effec- 
tive for America than the Japanese is for Japan 
would be hard, very hard, to say. At times we 
are inclined to laud, and again, we are inclined 
to depreciate, the efficiency of the American 
school and college. But on the whole, under 
existing conditions, sober judgment inclines 
to the conviction that the American education 
is giving good service to the American peo- 
ple. I am confident that a similar condition of 
efficiency prevails in Japan. 

The nation is in a sense feeling its way in 
education. Education has already done much 
for the people. It has in ten years reduced the 
number who cannot read and write to a very 
small percentage. It has quickened every 
form of endeavor. It has been one of the 
chief causes contributing to the making of 
Japan a world-power. Japan's confidence, too, 
in the value of education was never so great 
as at this very hour. 



IV 

EDUCATION WITHOUT EELIGION AND 
WITH ETHICS 

Japan's schools represent the most serious 
endeavor now being made in the world to give 
a complete education without instruction in 
religion, and with instruction in ethics. It 
might be said that Japan has no religion ; 
and that, therefore, her schools are necessarily 
bereft of this instruction. It might also be 
said that Japan has three religions ; and that, 
therefore, her schools should include instruc- 
tion in them, and that in giving this instruction 
they should treat the three alike by a common 
inclusion in the curriculum. Whether these 
opposing inferences be sound or fallacious, 
there is truth in the double statement that 
among the Japanese people are found many 
firm adherents to Christianity, to Buddhism, 
and to Shintoism, and also that a large pro- 
portion of this people — possibly the largest 



96 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

— are adherents of no faith at all. But what- 
ever faith be held or not held, the govern- 
ment does rigorously adopt the method of the 
exclusion of all dogmatic religious instruction. 
The history of various religions is taught in 
the universities, but the teaching is historical. 

This result of exclusion is apparently in- 
evitable. The national policy is one quite as 
liberal as obtains in the United States, of ab- 
solute freedom in matters religious. Under 
r such a policy the exclusion of the formal 
teaching of any religion seems necessary. 
Primary teacher and university professor, as 
well as the people, give assent. The private 
school or university is, of course, free to teach 
or not to teach. 

The impossibility of giving religious in- 
struction is felt by not a few of the people as 
a lamentable condition. They wish that the 
inevitable conclusion could in some way be 
avoided. But be it said, the regret over the 
condition is not so great as it would be in the 
United States. For the conception prevailing 
among these two peoples regarding the rela- 



EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 97 

tion of man and of his duty to the Superior 
Being, whether that Being be interpreted as 
personal or impersonal, differs fundamentally. 
It is customary, or at least not unusual, for 
the American to say that no one can do his 
finite duty properly without recognizing the 
relation of this duty to an ultimate Being; for 
this finite duty has infinite consequences. 
But the Japanese say, if one does his finite 
duty as best he can, he is in that very doing 
properly relating himself to infinite being. The 
American method proceeds somewhat from 
the unknown and remote to the known and 
the near ; the Japanese from the known and 
the present to the unknown and remote. 
The American might be called the more philo- 
sophic, the Japanese the more scientific. 

If, however, any system of religion were to 
be taught in the government schools and col- 
leges of Japan, that religion would be the 
Christian. For, though the Court is formally 
allied with Shintoism, yet the principles of 
Christianity are the principles which would 
more readily be accepted by the people. The 



98 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

distinction, however, is made between what 
may be called the Christianity of the Foul 
Gospels, and the Christianity of America, or 
of England, or of Germany. National Chris- 
tianity has, in the opinion of the Japanese, 
come to be encumbered by either specula- 
tions or formalisms, which serve to separate 
it from Christ's Christianity. Christ's Chris- 
tianity, it is held, represents the two principles 
of supreme love to God, and a love for one's 
neighbor as great as the love for one's self. 
Such a religion, simply conceived and simply 
stated, would be accepted by the Japanese 
with probably greater satisfaction than any 
other. But even so simple a declaration of 
the faith of Christ could not, under the pres- 
ent conditions, be taught in the government 
schools. 

Yet by some people the failure to give re- 
ligious tuition is felt as a great defect in the 
cause of public education. At least, one en- 
deavor has been attempted to find relief. The 
author of it is Professor Tanamoto, professor 
of pedagogy in the University of Kyoto. 



EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 9f 

Professor Tanamoto's method includes these 
elements: observation of and communication 
with nature, reading of the holy scriptures as 
found in any literature, including of course the 
New Testament, the telling of stories regarding 
religious duty and devotion, and prayer. In 
these elements and exercises, he believes, all 
children and their teachers, of whatever denom- 
inational faith, can unite. Prayer would be an 
act, or mood, or petition, addressed to the Be- 
ing whom the petitioner regarded as Supreme. 
It is, however, to be feared that such an 
attempt made in Japan is doomed to failure, 
as it would be in America. Such a method of 
religious instruction and impressiveness lacks 
the inspiration of personality and the force of 
definite conceptions of truth. But Japanese 
schools are face to face with the problem — 
as are the institutions of our own country 
— of finding a religious faith which is so 
broad that it can be taught in all schools, s< 
definite that its truths can be apprehended by 
the minds of children, so forceful, too, that its 
teaching shall aid in the making of right habits 



100 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

of conduct, and in the formation of sound 
character. In the endeavor to find a solution 
for this most serious problem of all humanity, 
a solution which shall be philosophically sound 
and religiously impressive and formative, the 
great nation of the West and the most ad- 
vanced nation of the East should each aid the 
other. 

But in the present absence of religious 
teaching, Japan is emphasizing instruction in 
ethics. This instruction is a required part 
of the course in practically every year of the 
thirteen which precede admission to the uni- 
versity. No nation is making a more ear- 
nest, a more constant, or a more consistent 
endeavor to give ethical instruction. A series 
of text-books has been prepared by Doctor 
Nakashima, professor of ethics in the Impe- 
rial University, himself a graduate of Western 
Keserve, and a student, under President Por- 
ter, at Yale, and at Jena. The works and the 
teaching are graduated to the presumed intel- 
lectual and moral development of the pupil at 
the different ages from six up. 



EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION 101 

The reason of this extreme devotion to 
ethics is, like most reasons for the presence 
of any study in the curriculum, manifold. One 
such reason may be found in the very absence 
of religious teaching. Because of this absence, 
the rebound to ethical instruction may be all 
the stronger. But there is a further and more 
impressive cause. 

The reputation which Japan, as a nation, 
has is that of the common prevalence of 
commercial dishonesty. As Professor George 
Trumbull Ladd — than whom Japan has no 
truer friend — said in a lecture given in the 
winter of 1906-07 in Osaka : — 

The impression is that there is a certain 
lack of these essential virtues of trueness and 
justness among a large proportion of your 
business men. I have been myself, as a friend 
of Japan, compelled to explain and to apolo- 
gize for this over and over again, by pointing 
out the historical conditions under which the 
nation has come so rapidly forward into the 
modern business world. I have explained also 
by affirming that a very considerable part of 
the impression is due to misapprehension. 

That Japan feels keenly the evil reputation 



102 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

under which many of her commercial and in- 
dustrial interests labor is clear. To the fact 
of this reputation the government is not blind. 
The government seems determined to do 
whatever can be done to remove this evil 
name. Instruction in ethics in all public 
schools is a natural method. With this method 
of the government the people sympathize. 
The common idea has been well expressed by 
Professor Ladd, also, in an address given re- 
cently before some members of the House of 
Peers on the future of Japan, published in 
both Japanese and English : " The element of 
morality, of ethical education and discipline, 
must enter into all this training of the younger 
generation, if the highest successes in the 
pursuits of peace are to be attained." It is 
also to be remembered that the fundamental 
note in the Imperial Rescript of 1890 con- 
cerning education was the worth of the moral 
virtues, and the duty of giving and receiving 
education in morality. 

Near the beginning of the ninth decade of 
the last century, Bismarck came to realize that 



EDUCATION WITHOUT EELIGION 103 

Germany was suffering from the reputation 
of her manufacturers and merchants for dis- 
honesty and trickery. The manifesto which he 
put forth in consequence had, it is believed, 
much influence in removing the condition and 
its cause. There can be no doubt but that the 
name of Japanese merchants for honest deal- 
ing is fairer to-day than at any time in the 
generation. This improved reputation is based 
on facts. The teaching of ethics in the schools 
is the great cause of this improvement. For 
Japan is determined both to seem honest and, 
what she is coming to know is more impor- 
tant, to be honest. 



THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 

The history of the Russian-Japanese War has 
given rise to the impression that the Japanese 
are great administrators. Did not the methods 
and results of this war manifest the highest 
forces of administration, — promptness, fore- 
thought, regard for sanitation, caution, cour- 
age, energy, efficiency ? The war did manifest 
all these elements, but before assuming, there- 
fore, that they are characteristic of the Japa- 
nese people, it must be remembered that in 
this war the old samurai spirit was the rul- 
ing force. This spirit may well be said to 
represent the chief qualities which constitute 
worthy administration. But the samurai spirit, 
at once less limited than in the feudal period, 
and less strong, is weakest among the non- 
military classes, who are engaged in admin- 
istrative or similar services. Besides the pre- 
sence of the samurai spirit, it is to be remem- 



THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 105 

bered that the Japanese were preparing for 
this war for at least ten years. This prepara- 
tion was made by military and naval experts. 
Furthermore, it has been said that the Japa- 
nese did not so much win battles as the Rus- 
sians lost them. 

Aside from this questionable evidence pro- 
vided by the war, why should we expect the 
Japanese to be gifted with administrative 
skill? Would not the life and the character 
of the people for generations lead to the neces- 
sary conclusion that in such skill and power 
they would be preeminently deficient? There 
are, at least, four conditions which intimate 
that the Japanese as a people could not at 
the present time be naturally efficient admin- 
istrators. 

One condition lies in the lack of knowledge, 
of observation, and of power of supervision. 
The Japanese do not know how to do things ; 
they have seldom seen things done as they 
ought to be done. Some leaders have seen, 
and do understand and appreciate. Most, how- 
ever, live in ignorance of wise administrative 



106 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

methods, and are without a conception of the 
nature of strong administrative force. A pain- 
ful example of this lack of experience may be 
found in the hospitals. We have heard much 
of the splendid field hospitals and excellent 
sanitary conditions maintained during the war. 
But these were planned and supervised by 
military experts, leaders drawn from that small 
class of those who do understand and appre- 
ciate. The civil hospitals, although the most 
important ones are a part of the equipment of 
the Imperial Universities, have not such effec- 
tive administration. One of the first — if not 
the first — of requisites in the administration of 
a hospital, be it great or small, is cleanliness. 
So essential is this quality that its presence is 
not to be commended, but its lack warrants 
severest condemnation. The simple fact is 
that the great university hospitals are not 
clean. The evidence of uncleanness makes its 
constant appeal to at least two senses. The 
larger a hospital the greater the need of care 
in securing cleanliness. The Kyoto hospital 
has five hundred beds, and treats every year 



THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 107 

more than two hundred thousand out-patients. 
The Tokyo hospital is still larger, treating 
three hundred thousand out-patients each year. 
But lack of system in maintaining the simplest 
hygienic conditions is painfully evident. In 
fact, a Tokyo university professor, of Ameri- 
can education and training, long resident in 
Japan, has said that there is reason to believe 
that no public hospital in Japan is clean. 
Similar evidence, though in some respects less 
important, is offered by the hotels. Super- 
vision is usually lacking ; knowledge of what 
is a good hotel is also lacking; and the result 
of inefficiency is inevitable. 

This lack of experience is closely related to 
a common oriental condition, the lack of the 
sense of the value of time. The Japanese, like 
most peoples except those of the farther West, 
do not usually conceive of events as having 
a close relation to the category of time. They 
know the limitations of space far better than 
those of the other Kantian category of time. 
What, therefore, should, to the Western mind, 
be done this morning may be deferred to this 



108 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

afternoon ; what should be done to-day may 
be put off until to-morrow j and what should 
be done this week or this month, can just as 
well be done next week or next month. We 
are told that it is impolite to be prompt in 
keeping an engagement, — promptness might 
make the other person hurry. Such an intel- 
lectual conception of the value of time leads 
to practical procrastination. 

The oriental training in the habit of obedi- 
ence also necessitates inefficiency. This ele- 
ment of feudalism still abides as a common 
heritage and condition. The few were and are 
fitted to command, to direct, to inspire; the 
many were and are obedient subjects and sub- 
ordinates. The power of initiative is lacking. 
In that superb field for the use of administra- 
tive talent of the highest order, the railroad, 
this lack of initiative is evident. Many items 
might be named, but to one or two only do 
I call attention. Japan is subject to frequent 
and heavy floods. Every spring or fall the road- 
beds of the more important railways are washed 
away. The repairs are restorations merely, not 



THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 109 

improvements, and the next inundation re- 
peats the disaster. Before such a disaster oc- 
curring for the tenth or twentieth time, the 
Japanese mind seems to be as blind, the Jap- 
anese hand as helpless, as at the first occur- 
rence. To cite a representative incident: a 
recent flood was unusually severe, and some 
of its devastations created problems which il- 
lustrate the helplessness of the Japanese rail- 
road manager. At a point some ten miles out- 
side of Tokyo the tracks became submerged 
to the depth of several feet, and for a distance 
of several miles. Trains from the north were 
run up to the edge of this inland sea ; but for 
transportation across the water no regular 
facilities were provided. The Japanese quality 
of imitation has been magnified perhaps un- 
duly, but it is safe and just to say that this 
quality is far more conspicuous than the 
quality of origination. Japan has been an 
obedient student rather than a forthputting 
teacher. India, through China, taught her 
Buddhism, and China taught her art and 
literature. She has ever been and still is a 



110 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

learner, and in her learning she has had the 
grace or defect of submissiveness. 

I also believe that the courtesy of the 
people is the foe of efficiency in administra- 
tion. Whether the courtesy be fundamental 
or superficial, whether the courtesy is more 
essential to their being than integrity, is not 
the question; but that the courtesy is unflag- 
ging and minute is evident. Such courtesy 
often wars against the policy and the method 
of doing things. Courtesy has regard for 
other persons' prejudices, principles, wishes, 
limitations; administrative efficiency has re- 
gard for the accomplishment of results. It often 
overrides. In this accomplishment others' prej- 
udices, principles, wishes, limitations, may be 
necessarily despised, neglected, overcome. But 
many Japanese would be unwilling to achieve 
such results at such a sacrifice. They prefer 
courtesy to efficiency. 

Such a preference is a part of the senti- 
mentalism which some wise interpreters have 
thought is the fundamental characteristic of 
the Japanese people. A few have called them 



THE JAPANESE AS ADMINISTRATORS 111 

speculative, more have called them poetical, 
but most would agree in saying that senti- 
mental is an epithet which can be yet more 
fittingly applied. Their heart reasons, and 
their intellect feels. 

That the Japanese may become great ad- 
ministrators seems to me almost as evident as 
the truth that they are not now such. For 
Japan is a nation with a tremendous capacity 
for doing or for being that which she wills to 
do or to be. That she possesses such a capacity 
is one of the greatest lessons of the momen- 
tous history of the last forty years. 



YI 

JAPAN AS A COLONIZING AND 
EXPANDING POWER 

Beneath the general and heated discussion 
regarding the legal or illegal exclusion of the 
Japanese from the states of the Pacific Coast, 
beneath, too, the debate respecting the Japa- 
nese occupancy of Korea or any one of the 
South Sea Islands, lie two questions : (1) Can 
the Japanese colonize and expand? and (2) 
Will they? In answering the first question 
— Can the Japanese colonize and expand? — 
several considerations may be presented. 

(1) The increase of population, — the popu- 
lation is now increasing at the rate of almost 
five millions each decade. This increase arises 
almost wholly from the native race itself. Japan 
is the paradise of babies, both in numbers and, 
it may be added, in happiness. 

(2) This increase, together with the present 
population of fifty millions and the relatively 



JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 113 

small area of land, represents a strong expulsive 
force. But to the relatively small area should at 
once be added the fact that only a small part 
of this area can be cultivated. I find that econ- 
omists differ, some saying that this part is only 
one fifth, and others going so far as to declare 
that only one thirteenth can produce food for 
man or beast. But it is at least clear that the 
means of subsistence for a large and fast 
growing people is small. 

(3) The love of the people for themselves is 
greater than their love for Japan. Their regard 
for territory is less than their regard for the na- 
tion. The land is far less sacred than nation- 
ality. In emigration, therefore, they leave what 
is less dear, and carry along with them the holi- 
est symbol of their patriotism, — themselves. 

(4) A spirit which we call the spirit of pro- 
gress is mighty. The Japanese propose to make 
themselves the strongest nation that is possi- 
ble. This purpose is held by all classes. The 
coolie who pulls your ricksha is inspired by 
it as well as the professor in the university. 
The spirit is at the present time more exten- 



114 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

sive than intensive, representing rather breadth 
than depth. It includes the development of the 
public school system and the foundation of 
new universities, but in it is also embraced 
the expansion of Japanese commerce and the 
going forth of Japanese people into all parts. 
Such enlargements give delight and a sense 
of glory to the Japanese soul. 

(5) The race is a hardy one. The members 
are trained to labor, and labor they do, from 
infancy to age. The older children bear their 
younger brothers and sisters, strapped to their 
bending backs. Laborers in mills and clerks 
in shops have long hours each day, and some 
of them seven days each week. They bear heat 
and cold with somewhat of that indifference 
which Tacitus attributes to the German tribes. 
Their food is small in quantity, — like their 
compact bodies, — and simple, and upon it 
they flourish, and in it are content. Such a 
race can find a fitting home in the islands of 
the southern as well as of the northern Pa- 
cific, and also on the shores of any ocean. 

(6) The Japanese are an adjustable people. 



JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 115 

They readily fit themselves into any condition. 
One might, either in commendation or depre- 
ciation, say that they are the great imitators 
of the world. But this power of imitation is 
only the exterior manifestation of a deeper and 
more serious power of adjustability. In France 
they adopt the way of Frenchmen, in Germany 
of Germans, and in the United States of Amer- 
icans. They are afraid of seeming to be pecul- 
iar, unusual, extreme. They are especially afraid 
of ridicule, — they cannot bear to be laughed 
at. They are never guilty of swagger. They 
are more obsequious than the Frenchman, and 
have as warm a desire to please as the Amer- 
ican. Such a race is not unwelcome in all nor- 
mal parts of the world, and, once received, its 
members make themselves at home. 

(7) In the fact that the nation has great 
leaders is found an element of its colonizing 
and expanding power. The leadership is great. 
In the United States we lament the absence of 
worthy leaders. Life seems to be getting ahead 
of itself, — the propelling forces are stronger 
than the directive. In Japan the forces that 



116 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

guide have become far superior to the forces 
that constitute the body of the people. The 
leaders are far more superior to the commu- 
nity than are the leaders of American people 
superior to that people. The Japanese leaders, 
like, for instance, Prince Ito, well represent 
Burke's definition of wisdom. They do apply 
their knowledge to public affairs. They are 
far abler, more honest, more unselfish than 
Chinese statesmen. They are quite as scien- 
tific statesmen as the world can offer. In them, 
too, are found those elements of soberness, se- 
riousness, and far-sightedness, which seem to 
characterize great statesmen of every age and 
nation, as Peel, Gladstone, Bismarck. Now, be 
it said that the leaders of this nation clearly 
and profoundly recognize that emigration is 
the most natural method of extending Japa- 
nese influence, and of giving happy solution to 
some of the more urgent domestic problems. If 
Prince Ito could take a million of his fellow 
countrymen to Korea, he would find his ad- 
ministrative problems diminished in number 
and simplified. 



JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 117 

(8) With this element of great leadership 
should be linked a characteristic of the people, 
the characteristic of obedience. The origin of 
this element is variously accounted for, — the 
relation of dependence of the feudal system, 
the former ignorance of the people, the racial 
quality of non-resistance. But, of whatever 
origin, the Japanese are a people obedient to 
their superiors. The obedience begins in the 
home, — to parents ; it is continued in the 
schoolroom, — to teachers; it becomes a part 
of life, — to civil authority. It is said that the 
life of a Japanese woman consists of three obe- 
diences : to her father, her husband, her mother- 
in-law. The man's obediences are not quite so 
constant or close ; but the general atmosphere 
of inferiority and subjection in which he lives 
is not unlike. This atmosphere was of peculiar 
significance in the last great war. 

The point, therefore, of this interpretation 
of the obedience of this people is that the 
wise counsels of statesmen urging emigration 
will find a quick response in the hearts of 
those to whom they are given. 



118 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

(9) The means and facilities for emigration 
and for defending her people, when they have 
gone forth from their native island, Japan 
possesses. She has two or three great steam- 
ship lines, which compare well with such fleets 
as the Hamburg- American and the North Ger- 
man Lloyd. She can transport her people eas- 
ily, swiftly, economically, to any shore. There 
is, too, reason to believe that her own navy 
could protect them well upon whatever coast 
they might make their new home. 

To the second question, Will the Japanese 
colonize and expand, and especially will they 
move into the United States in large numbers, 
— an answer of some degree of worth may be 
found in the history of recent immigration to 
the United States and other countries. The 
whole number of Japanese living in this coun- 
try at the present time is less than 150,000. 
About one half of this number, or some 
65,000, are living in the Hawaiian Islands ; 
about 40,000 are in California, and 10,000 in 
the State of Washington. In all Canada the 
number is less than 10,000. Certainly the race 



JAPAN AS A COLONIZING POWER 119 

of 50,000,000 has not shown a very strong 
tendency to immigrate into the New World. 
To move to other parts of the world, they 
have manifested a disposition even weaker. All 
China has hardly 20,000 Japanese ; and till 
recent movements began, Korea had only 42,- 
000. All Europe has hardly even a thousand, 
and about one half of this number are found 
in England. It seems evident that less than 
300,000 Japanese are living in foreign coun- 
tries. The number, too, who are going out of 
the country shows certain signs of decrease. In 
the year 1900 were issued 40,000 passports for 
Japanese going abroad ; in 1904 the number 
had diminished to 27,000; and in 1905 it had 
fallen to 19,000. 

Therefore, despite all these reasons which 
show their capacity for and the probability of 
their emigration, recent history and present 
conditions make the conclusion inevitable that 
the Japanese will not come to America or go 
to any foreign country in large numbers. In 
fact, the statical quality in this nation, as in 
the case of most individuals, is mightier than 



120 EDUCATION IN THE FAE EAST 

the dynamical. No part of the world need fear 
a tidal wave of people from the Japanese Is- 
lands. Instead of fearing the presence of a 
few thousand or tens of thousands more in 
the United States of this people, the emotion 
should be one of regret that they will not come. 
As students and as laborers, they should re- 
ceive a hearty welcome from both the United 
States and Canada. 

But, of course, beneath this question of the 
colonizing and expanding power of one nation 
lies the vast and tremendous question of the 
relations of all nations to one another, — ■ re- 
lations economic, social, and racial, — appar- 
ently the great question of the next genera- 
tions. The present problem is a part of the 
more and most extensive and complex problem, 
the problem whether all parts of the world 
are for all peoples, or whether certain parts are 
permanently to belong to certain peoples. 



CHINA 



VII 

CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 

The Middle Ages gave to modern life two 
institutions of commanding significance, — the 
church and the university. They represent the 
noblest results of the struggles of man for a 
thousand years. Modern life has been largely 
formed by them. No country can be called 
civilized till it has developed institutions as 
exponents of the lasting and fundamental 
instincts of its people. Some institutions of 
this permanent character China has already 
developed; others are still in the process. 
China may be called a civilized, a semi-civilized, 
or a barbarous people, according to the value 
attached to the various institutions already 
formed or still forming. 

There are three or four institutions which 
would, by common agreement, be regarded as 
already well developed in the Middle Kingdom. 
The government is the first. In theory an 



124 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

absolute monarchy it is, and also at times an 
absolute monarcby in practice; but it is in 
some respects an oligarchy, or a constitutional 
monarchy, without a constitution in either the 
American or the English sense. But, of what- 
ever precise nature, — and its precise nature it 
would be difficult to interpret, — the Chinese 
government is well established. Whatever 
may happen in China, and no one knows what 
will, the people will not dissolve into a condi- 
tion of unrelated civic units. The government 
is at the present time reactionary. The con- 
servative party is controlling. But the liberal 
party is by no means weak. Its position is 
somewhat strengthened by an active revolu- 
tionary party. For China, like her northern 
neighbor, has internal foes, who are plotting 
to overthrow the present dynasty. The watch- 
word of these revolutionists is, " The Manchus 
must go." For their expulsion a campaign 
constant and more or less active goes on. It 
is urged that the government of the Manchus 
has been ineffective. They have not preserved 
the integrity of the Chinese Empire. It is 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 125 

said — though probably without much truth 
— that the revolutionary party comprises in 
sympathy at least no less than one third of all 
the people. No significant results have emerged 
upon the death of the Empress Dowager. 
The belief that the integrity of China will be 
preserved by the United States and by the 
governments of western Europe has greatly 
strengthened in recent years. 

In such a period of political unrest the posi- 
tion of the army becomes of great, perhaps of 
prevailing, importance. What that position 
would be no one dares to prophesy. The army 
of a nation like China is liable to be an oppor- 
tunist army; it wishes to fight on the winning 
side. A regiment of Chinese troops not long 
ago was sent into a province to quell a rebellion. 
"On which side are you going to fight, — of 
the government or of the rebels? " was asked 
one of the officers. "I don't know," was his 
reply; "we shall wait till we get up there 
before we decide." If it should seem prob- 
able that the present dynasty will be able to 
maintain itself, the army will be found on 



126 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

the side of the throne, with a fair degree 
of allegiance; but if the revolutionary party 
should be able to make a great show of strength 
and good promise of winning, the army will 
be divided. 

A second historic institution China possesses, 
and in a high degree of development, — the 
family. Perhaps the degree is too high for the 
interests of a progressive civilization. In the 
United States, and to an extent in England, 
the great growth of the principle of individ- 
ualism has caused the family to become a social 
unit of less power than it deserves. In recent 
years the endeavor has been made to lift and 
to enlarge the place which the family occupies 
as a social unit, and to minimize in certain 
ways excessive individualism. In China the 
opposite condition prevails, and ought to 
prevail. The family has become an element in 
a system of religion. Worship of ancestors 
has become a duty. To disturb a tomb is one 
of the most dastardly of sins. The grave is 
made an altar. The dead hand rules. But 
before death, the family system prevails as a 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 127 

mighty social force. I have just seen a picture 
of four generations of a family living together, 
and in quarters too small for the members 
of a single generation. Such uniting of the 
family is not good, either for the family, as 
■worthily interpreted, or for the individual 
members thereof, or for the community of 
which all are a part. We in America who are 
seeking to enlarge the social place and func- 
tion of the family, may well observe the con- 
ditions prevailing in the ancient Middle King- 
dom. 

The condition, too, of the Chinese family 
bears an intimate relation to the holding of 
property. Property belongs less to the individ- 
ual and more to the family than prevails in 
the Occident. The debts of one member may 
become an obligation of every member of the 
family. Gains, as well as losses, are commu- 
nistic. 

The family probably represents the most con- 
servative element and institution of Chinese 
life. Its conservatism approaches petrifaction. 
It looks to the future, too, as well as to the past. 



128 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Its purpose is to beget sons who shall insure its 
lasting future. But to attempt to alter these 
conditions of the past or of the future, would 
result in evils far more disastrous than any 
now prevailing. The modern movement should 
recognize and appreciate its worth, and seek, 
so far as it may, to lessen the undue social 
emphasis which is placed upon it. 

Every student of history knows how impor- 
tant was the place which the guild filled in the 
society of the Middle Ages. A function of sim- 
ilar significance the guild is now fulfilling in 
China. Whenever and wherever a monarchy 
is weak, individuals are prone to combine for 
the protection and promotion of their interests, 
individual, economic, social. In province and 
town are found these associations of trades- 
men, of manufacturers, and of workmen. They 
are trade unions rather than labor unions. They 
are commercial organizations rather than social. 
They are formed to protect their business, as 
a primary aim. This method of protection lies 
in laws and rules, in taxes and fines, in sym- 
pathy and promise of cooperation. Some guilds 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 129 

are possessed of large property, and some em- 
ploy regular officials. Their existence is not 
observed by the "looker-on in Venice"; but 
they move through Chinese life a strong, 
though largely invisible, influence. 

China also enters into the enlarging life of 
the world, having the greater of the two influ- 
ences which represent the gifts of the Middle 
Ages to modern times : Confucianism has been 
her ethics ; and by recent edict Confucianism 
has become her religion. Yet when one has so 
said, he is inclined at once to modify the re- 
mark. For, whatever may be the imperial edict, 
Confucianism is ethical and not religious. Fur- 
thermore, imperial edict cannot be so impera- 
tive, or dowager queen or emperor so impe- 
rious, as to transmute Confucius into a deity. 
To pay respects to, to bow at the tablet of, 
Confucius does not constitute an act of wor- 
ship, unless there be the sense of adoration in 
the heart of the devotee. The testimony of 
those teaching in the government colleges is 
to the effect that " the act of worship " at the 
tablet of Confucius is not held to be worship. 



130 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

" The mood of the student," said a teacher to 
me, "is quite like the mood of a son con- 
gratulating his father on a birthday." 

Religion, too, is not organized, as was the 
church of the Middle Ages. The temples are 
vacant. Many of them have become school- 
houses. Priests have little influence, and this 
little lessens. Buddhism — an exotic, the gift 
of India — declines, and it never took firm hold 
of the Chinese mind. Therefore, though I thus 
write of religion being an institution which 
China can use in her struggle for her own civ- 
ilizing, it is to be remembered that its worth 
is more atmospheric than institutional, and its 
place belongs rather to the kingdom of this 
world of social obligations than to the other 
and unseen world of the eternities and the 
infinities. 

There are other institutions besides these 
four — government, family, guilds, and re- 
ligion — which China possesses, but they are 
in the making. Chief among them are society, 
laws, the press, and the currency. 

In one of his letters Matthew Arnold writes 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 131 

of the worth of society in forming opinion 
about public questions. America is coming to 
appreciate the worth of society in this respect, 
as she has for a long time understood its value 
in ephemeral and narrow relations. But China 
has yet wholly to learn this lesson, which 
England has learned, and which America is in 
the process of learning. For it may be said 
that there is no society in China, in the sense 
in which the term is understood in Anglo- 
Saxon countries. There are few or no oppor- 
tunities for men and women to meet together 
for the sake of the simple enjoyment of the 
presence of one another, and for the sake of 
good talk. The customs of the country forbid 
such association. The loss to the individual, 
and to the whole community suffered through 
such disbarments, is very serious. The weaker 
and silly side of society in Anglo-Saxon na- 
tions is liable to blind one to the real, large, 
and permanent good which is accomplished 
by it. But when one compares even the less 
worthy element of society with the condition 
prevailing in a community in which there is 



132 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

no society at all, the great worth of society be- 
comes at once evident and impressive. 

There are at least two evil results which 
either directly proceed from or are fostered 
by the lack of society. They are gambling 
and opium smoking. The Chinese are the 
first of gambling nations as they are also 
probably the most addicted to the opium pipe, 
despite recent reforms. Gambling gratifies a 
somewhat early developed instinct of human- 
ity, the instinct for speculation and for taking 
chances. And as a distinguished and much 
traveled Chinese officer said to me : " What 
are my countrymen to do ? They — the ordi- 
nary people — do not read much. They are 
shut out from the company of women outside 
of their own home. What is left to them but 
dice and the games ? " The same remark might 
be essentially made about opium. The interest 
which most civilized men find in good talk 
with good women is denied Chinese gentle- 
men. They therefore turn for interest to the 
opium joint. 

A great movement is now going on in 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 133 

China to suppress the use of opium. The 
attack upon it is made by direct prohibition. 
That method has, of course, its value. But 
the opium habit is one of those habits which, 
like the alcohol habit, should also be attacked 
by indirection. The appetite out of which the 
opium habit springs should be attacked. This 
appetite for excitement, for interest, for get- 
ting outside of one's self, is one which could 
and should be ministered unto by the absorp- 
tions and pleasures of good society. 

China is also in need of that institution of 
social democracy known as the press. Some 
progress has been made both in the freedom 
granted to it and in the number of its journals. 
But this progress has been small, by reason 
of an unreasonable and whimsical censorship. 
Upon this point, and also upon the whole 
question of the worth of a free press in China, 
the ablest newspaper published in China, the 
"North China Daily News," of Shanghai, said 
in a recent editorial : — 

From time immemorial Chinese newspa- 
pers, if such they may be called, from the 



134 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

"Peking Gazette" downwards, have been 
little more than official publications;, over 
which the government has always exercised 
a rigid censorship. It is gratifying to notice, 
however, that the power of the press is begin- 
ning to make itself felt even in China, and 
there can be no doubt that newspapers will 
become increasingly an important factor in 
the affairs, moral, religious, and political, of 
the empire. What has been accomplished 
through their instrumentality in other lands, 
we may reasonably expect to see accomplished 
in this land also. Only a beginning has thus 
far been made, and the thin edge of the 
wedge has been inserted. What will be ac- 
complished when freedom of speech and of 
the press are fully accorded ! 

The institution of an influential press is 
now in the process of formation. The scholarly 
class will be found among its heartiest sup- 
porters, and the increasingly powerful mer- 
cantile class will give to it a pecuniary right 
which it has not usually had. The press will 
more speedily come to its own place of power 
than will the institution of society. 

A third institution which China needs is a 
body of laws for the better and best ordering 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 135 

of society. It may be said that China has, in 
a sense, the common law. It has a body of 
precedents, which are of great value in pres- 
ent litigation. But all judicial questions are 
now made to depend upon the mere opinion 
of the judge, in a way which cannot minis- 
ter to the administration of justice or to the 
betterment of humanity. This opinion is so 
subjected to venal and trivial influences that 
a proper conclusion is most doubtful. Justice 
is indeed blind, and it has an empty and itch- 
ing palm. A body, therefore, of laws is re- 
quired for aiding the court in the administra- 
tion of justice. 

This institution of the law might fittingly 
carry discussion far afield into the question 
of the establishment of a parliament, and also 
of the making of a constitution. For intima- 
tions of such an establishment and of such 
a making of a written fundamental law have 
been heard. But, be it briefly said, the opin- 
ion is common that China is not yet prepared 
for either. A constitutional monarchy requires 
a degree of intelligence and of interest in 



136 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

government which the four hundred millions 
of Chinese do not possess. Education must do 
its great work for a people, in order to prepare 
them to administer a great government with 
effectiveness. 

There is a fourth institution direfully needed 
in China, the institution of a stable and uni- 
form currency. The empire has many cur- 
rencies, and of diverse value. They are more 
numerous than the dialects, and even more 
troublesome. The difficulty of establishing 
one uniform currency for the whole kingdom 
is well set forth by Commissioner H. B. Morse, 
who is just now finishing a great career cov- 
ering a generation in the Chinese Customs 
Service. Mr. Morse says : — 

The tax-collector . . . will fig^ht strenu- 
ously against any obligation to pay into the 
Treasury the exact coin which he has received 
from the taxpayer. The powerful body of 
Chinese bankers, organized as such when 
Europe did not yet know the science, will 
accept the change only if they are shown the 
possibility of greater profits than under exist- 
ing conditions. . . . Even the native mer- 
chants and tradesmen, who will benefit enor- 



CHINESE INSTITUTIONS 137 

mously by the simplification of the currency, 
will also oppose a change from the present 
system, in which each man counts confidently 
on getting the better in the encounter of wits. 
Ordinarily the proletariat remains neutral in 
such a question, but in China the merest 
coolie, earning sixpence by a long day of hard 
work, will spend an hour of his time to gain 
an exchange of ten minutes' work. 1 

Thus difficult it is to attempt any reform of 
the money system of this great empire of di- 
verse and conflicting interests. 

These four institutions — society, a free 
press, a proper body of laws, and a uniform 
currency — are needed in China. The need 
will finally be filled, but generations will be 
born and die before the desired consumma- 
tions will have been reached. For in Cathay 
the cycles are long, very long. 

1 The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, pp. 
168, 169. 



VIII 

THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 

That most popular simile of schoolboy compo- 
sitions, of Minerva springing full-armed from 
the head of Jupiter, may be applied to the new 
education in China. From the Chinese gov- 
ernment the new education came forth by 
imperial edict. The edict and the consequent 
commands and directions present a fully ar- 
ticulated scheme of education. 

Four grades, at least, of education are made : 
(1) The primary school, of five years; (2) the 
common school, of four years ; (3) the middle 
school, of five years ; (4) the provincial college, 
of at least two years, and for some students (5) 
the Imperial University, at Peking, of such a 
length as may be desired. 

Such a course, covering in all from sixteen 
to twenty years, represents a most impressive 
endeavor to introduce the Western system of 
education into the Middle Kingdom. 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 139 

The system is indeed Western, but it is West- 
ern colored by Japanese influences. The mar- 
tial conqueror of China has become her teacher 
in things intellectual; and more willing has 
China become to receive her conqueror as a 
teacher since this teacher has become the con- 
queror also of Russia. The rapid advancement 
of Japan to a place among the great nations 
gives to her example and teachings a peculiar 
impressiveness. Japan in turn, it may be added, 
found in Germany and America her intellec- 
tual and pedagogical models. 

The Avon to the Severn flows, the Severn to the sea, 
And Wycliffe's dust must spread abroad, wide as the waters 
be. 

The content of this prolonged course is 
quite as significant of the modern spirit as is 
its length. Throughout the nine years of the 
primary and the common school, Chinese is 
the chief subject, representing ten hours a 
week. Writing covers six hours the first year, 
but diminishes, becoming only two hours in 
the ninth. Arithmetic begins with three hours, 
but increases to four at the close of the course. 



140 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

History and geography begin in the fourth year, 
each subject being allowed two years ; but in 
the sixth year the allowance of time granted 
to history is increased one hour. In each year 
of the four of the common school, some science 
is taught two hours a week, and drawing one. 
Throughout the whole period two hours are 
given to ethics, and three hours to physical 
drill. 

A similar scheme of equal elaborateness is 
prescribed in the middle school of five years. 
In this whole period, Chinese is still studied 
for six hours. English is introduced, being al- 
lowed also six hours; mathematics is continued 
for four hours, including algebra, geometry, 
and trigonometry, as well as arithmetic. Draw- 
ing and ethics are also continued, each having 
one hour, and physical drill still has its for- 
mer allowance of three hours. Both foreign 
and Chinese history is studied in the first two 
years four hours, and in the last three years 
three hours, a week. Such are the " constants " 
of this higher school course. In addition, the 
"variables" are significant. For four years 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 141 

geography commands two hours a week. For 
three years four hours a week are given to 
sciences, in which chemistry and physics fit- 
tingly occupy a leading place ; and allied with 
them are physiology and hygiene, physical 
geography, geology, and mineralogy. But the 
sciences are not suffered entirely to exclude 
literary studies, for political economy and law 
are studies of two hours a week each for the 
last year of the long course. 

The student who has completed these three 
schools, the primary, the common, and the 
middle, covering in all no less than fourteen 
years, has reached the age of at least twenty, 
— the age of the ordinary sophomore in the 
American college. On reaching this stage he 
may pass on to the college of his province. He 
may enter the normal school, preparing him- 
self to be a teacher to his countrymen, in a 
course covering either one year or three years. 
This school includes such subjects as would 
be found in a good American normal school. 
Or, this graduate of a middle school may de- 
sire, probably does, to become an official. In 



142 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

this case he enters a special school. The pro- 
spectus of one of these schools, that at Ningpo, 

says : — 

To teach the modern methods of law and 
government, especially as they are related to 
those of China, and laying emphasis on the 
study of Japanese law and methods of govern- 
ment. Resident students must, previous to 
their entrance, have taken a Chinese degree, or 
be graduates of a middle school. The course 
extends over two years, and the students who 
have been successful in their examinations 
will receive certificates, and will then be recom- 
mended by the prefect to the governor for 
official appointment, or for further study in 
Peking. 

The course of study includes commercial 
law, theory of government, international law, 
penal law, judicial law, army organization, 
Japanese, and a little English. 

Such, in bare and bald outline, is the edu- 
cational system which China has adopted. As 
a system, comprehending the chief subjects of 
modern learning, it deserves and receives the 
highest commendation. The government merits 
great praise for laying such foundations under 
most serious difficulties. 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 143 

Schools to teach these studies have heen 
established throughout the empire. Some of 
the schoolhouses are large and impressive 
structures. Thousands of these schools are 
now trying to educate hundreds of thousands 
of Chinese boys and girls. The spectacle is 
one of the mightiest triumphs of education 
and of government ever known, despite all the 
haltings and failures to which the undertaking 
is subjected. 

In carrying out the system, the making of 
text-books has become an important factor. 
Text-books have been produced in enormous 
quantity and of great variety. Many of them 
are translations of English or Japanese text- 
books. In some of them the Japanese influence 
is strong. Of all these books, perhaps none 
are more important than the Chinese national 
readers. The series contains readings on sub- 
jects of all sorts, — scientific, historical, ethical. 
It may be added that these books frequently 
argue against superstition and idolatry. One 
who knows them has said that they contain 
nothing which opposes Christianity. But be- 



144 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

sides this series are numerous others, especially 
in the sciences. History is also well repre- 
sented. 

But more important than the system of edu- 
cation or the text-hook is the teacher. The 
old Chinese teacher does not easily lend him- 
self to the new order. He is by nature conserv- 
ative. He clings to the old methods. He is 
himself so wedded to the old that he confesses 
to a sort of intellectual awkwardness when he 
tries to use the new learning and the new 
methods. He keeps himself, in his fear of 
making mistakes, closely to his text-book. He 
still emphasizes the value of memory. He him- 
self is not a thinker, and he is not inclined to 
adopt methods which quicken thinking in his 
students. Modern pedagogy is to him so new 
a science and art that either he has little ap- 
preciation of its worth, or, if he is able to 
appreciate, he is not able to use it with facility 
and efficiency. 

The teacher, the text-book, and the course 
of study are all designed for the advantage of 
the student. The Chinese student has a mind 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 145 

strong and virile. The mental quality is akin 
to the physical. But his mind, like the feet of 
his sisters, has been fettered by ages of un- 
reasoning limitations. The education of his 
forefathers has been either no education at all, 
or, if it has existed, it has been unreasoning 
and irrational. He himself in his newly found 
freedom feels himself strange ; he sees men as 
trees walking. But gradually he is finding 
himself. His conception of education is rather 
of a vocation than of culture. The vocation 
may take on somewhat of a materialistic basis 
and color. He desires those physical advan- 
tages which education is supposed to create. 
" What are you going to do ?" asked a teacher 
of a graduate — an able man — of Nang Yang 
College. " Commerce," was the answer. "And 
why commerce?" persisted the questioner; 
" is it for the sake of enriching yourself, or 
helping your country?" The reply indicated 
that the purpose was not altogether altruistic. 
The inspiring motives of the casting off of 
the old education and the adoption of the new 
are manifold. The immediate occasion is, un- 



146 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

doubtedly, the failure of the Boxer movement 
of 1900. The entrance of the allied forces into 
Peking in the summer of that year was the 
entrance of intellectual light quite as much as 
of armies. The government became aware, as 
perhaps never before, that there was a world 
outside of China, and superior in at least some 
respects to China. 

Connected with this occasion is the rise o£ 
Japan into a place as a world-power. China 
saw and was moved. She saw, moreover, that 
the rise of Japan was due, in part at least, 
to education. China, therefore, determined to 
adopt similar means and methods. She went 
about the business of education. Japanese 
methods and text-books she adopted. She im- 
ported Japanese teachers. She sent thousands, 
even tens of thousands, of her young men 
to Japan, to Tokyo, to Waseda University, 
and to other schools. Her old rival, and her 
conqueror, became her teacher, 

A third cause of the educational advance- 
ment lies in the force of the progressive men of 
China. The character of Chang Chih-Tung — 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 147 

one of the two greatest Chinese — and his writ- 
ing, as, for instance, his book, " China's Only 
Hope," represent a mighty influence. Against 
hard odds and good fighters do the progressive 
leaders contend. Chang Chili-Tung himself 
has described them in his book : — 

The anti-reformers may be roughly divided 
into three classes : — 

First, the conservatives, who are stuck in 
the mud of antiquity. The mischief wrought 
by these obstructionists may be readily per- 
ceived. 

Second, the slow bellies of Chinese official- 
dom, who in case of reform would be com- 
pelled to bestir themselves, and who would be 
held responsible for the outlay of money and 
men necessary for the changes* The secret 
machinations of these befuddled, indolent, 
slippery nepotists thwart all schemes of re- 
form. They give out that it is not "conven- 
ient," and in order to cloak their evil deeds 
rehearse the old story, the usual evasive drivel 
about " old custom." And if we attempt to 
discover what this precious old custom in the 
matter of education and government is, there 
will be remonstrances on all sides. Old custom 
is a bugaboo, a password to lying and deceit. 
How can any one believe it ? 

Third, the hypercritics. 1 

1 China's Only Hope, p. 123. 



148 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

But against such forces the reform party 
has won, and is still winning ; though no 
prophet would intimate how long it will prove 
to be victorious. 

But, above all, the missionary and Chris- 
tian forces of the Middle Kingdom represent a 
permanent cause of her interest in education. 
Christianity has not been in China for three 
hundred years, or for a hundred years with 
special power, for nothing. Christianity is far 
more than a religion. It is an education. The 
church and the schoolhouse historically stand 
side by side. The priest is also a teacher. 
Protestant Christianity has for the last hun- 
dred years in its missionary propagandism 
given special heed to education. Such a force 
operating for generations, even in a most con- 
servative society, could not fail to effect results 
of comprehensive and of definite significance. 

Under the influence of these four occa- 
sions and motives, not to mention others, 
China has entered into the work of educa- 
tion. She has come to realize that the work is 
more complex and more difficult than it seemed 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 149 

five years ago. She undertook the tremendous 
task without proper forethought. It was a 
leap in the dark. But the leap was taken, and 
the consequences of taking it she must, for 
better or for worse, endure. 

One's heart, therefore, goes out in great 
interest to the educationists of China. For the 
difficulties which beset them are very serious. 
I doubt if in the history of the world diffi- 
culties more serious have beset those whose 
duty it is to establish and to promote a system 
of education. 

One difficulty lies in the necessary doubt 
regarding the sincerity and earnestness of the 
Chinese government in its endeavor to foster 
the education of its people. The government 
may be honest in the desire to educate : it 
may not be. Even if the desire be real as far 
as it goes, doubt also arises respecting the 
earnestness and fullness of this desire. The 
edicts abolishing the old system of examina- 
tions followed not long after the cataclysm of 
the summer of 1900. This break with the past 
seemed one of the inevitable results of that 



150 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

catastrophe. This and other consequences could 
not be avoided by the Court, however con- 
servative were the governmental tendencies. 
With these results was naturally united the 
necessity of giving to China such a system o£ 
education as had seemed to lift the rest of 
the world into civilization. But into it China 
did not enter with that spirit which moved 
the German people, after their Napoleonic 
distresses, into education, both university and 
common. The Germans were inspired by most 
personal and national ambitions; and the re- 
sult is read in the history of the University 
of Berlin. The Chinese were primarily moved 
from without : the degree of cooperation 
which the outside influence found in the 
Chinese heart was, and still is, a matter of 
grave doubt. This element of doubt in the 
sincerity and earnestness of the Chinese heart 
in promoting public education is a chief diffi- 
culty which the educationists meet. It is not 
a stone wall, which can be struck down : it is 
a malaria, which represents conditions that 
can be dealt with only by indirection. 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 151 

A second difficulty is the constant change 
of the educational purposes of "the authori- 
ties," and also the no less constant change of 
these authorities themselves. Shall the pro- 
vincial colleges be literary or scientific institu- 
tions? If scientific, shall they train agricul- 
turalists, or mechanical, or civil, or electrical 
engineers? In the course of a few years these 
different purposes may be imposed upon the 
teachers of a college by their official supe- 
riors, — superiors who are superior in only the 
official sense. Such changes are disastrous. No 
less disastrous are the changes wrought in the 
transfer of governing powers from one official 
board to another. At one time Nang Yang Col- 
lege, at Shanghai, for instance, may be under 
the charge of the Board of Agriculture, and at 
another under the charge of the Board of Com- 
munications, Post and Telegraphic. At one 
time a college may have a president who serves 
as the source of immediate authority, at an- 
other it may have no president, but be gov- 
erned by a council. The changes, too, in the 
viceroys of the different provinces may fun- 



152 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

damentally affect the fortunes of a college. One 
viceroy esteems education and promotes it ; his 
successor may despise it, and seek to limit its 
progress. All these conditions throw doubt 
into that most important part of college admin- 
istration, — the budget. Such instability is 
most trying and perplexing to the heart and 
the mind of the educationists of China. 

Another difficulty lies in the divorce which 
has for many centuries existed in China be- 
tween the scholar and the man of affairs. The 
scholar, be it always remembered, has from the 
early time held a high place in Chinese so- 
ciety. The learned man has been esteemed, and 
learning honored. The learning has, however, 
been an end in itself. The scholar filled his 
mind with the paragraphs and the sentiments 
of the old moralists. Such stuffing has given 
him pleasure. That his knowledge should be 
of any worth or benefit to humanity has been 
quite foreign to his thought. Most egoistic 
has he been ; and the community has been con- 
tent to let him be egoistic. But modern edu- 
cation has for its primary note service. It is 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 153 

in purpose, method, and content altruistic. If 
it promotes scholarship and makes scholars, 
it looks beyond the accumulation of know- 
ledge to the worth which this wealth may prove 
to be to humanity. It is the introduction of 
this altruistic ideal which the teachers of many 
Chinese schools find of great difficulty. 

Allied to this specific cause is a general con- 
dition, out of which, possibly, the cause to a 
degree springs. I allude to the doubt which 
pervades, at least, some orders of Chinese so- 
ciety regarding the real worth of human char- 
acter. Is man, the ordinary man, worth edu- 
cating? Is it well for man to seek to lift man 
by education? Once a coolie, why not always 
a coolie ? Is not education disquieting to the 
individual and disturbing to society? Is it not 
better for man to be half blind and content, 
than to see plainly and be discontented? Such 
questioning is in the air at Peking, Wuchang, 
and Shanghai. It serves, if not to eliminate 
education, at least to dull its enthusiasms. 

But the severest difficulty found in the 
progress of Chinese education lies in the lack 



154 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

of a sufficient number of good teachers. The 
government, provincial and national, went 
into the work of education as a sort of leap 
into the dark. It adopted and created the 
material forms and forces of education, which 
are evident and impressive enough. It built 
schoolhouses, large, and of high walls. In not 
a few capitals the schoolhouses are the most 
impressive structures. But the government 
failed to take proper account of the fact that, 
if it is easy to build a schoolhouse, it is hard 
to get a teacher. Teachers cannot be made in 
a year, as can a schoolhouse. The govern- 
ment did not put the cart of the school before 
the horse of the teacher, for though there was 
a cart there was no horse. Teachers in a 
sense are grown ; and growth, unlike manu- 
facturing, takes much time. Therefore, while 
there were and are schoolhouses, and also 
pupils, in abundance, too great abundance, in 
a sense, there was and is a dearth of teachers. 
The gun was made and mounted, but there 
was no gunner to fire it. In such a dearth in- 
competency flourishes. But the dearth was 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 155 

and is so great that the number of even incom- 
petent teachers proves to be insufficient. Some 
schoolhouses are, therefore, houses without 
schools, and other schoolhouses are only half 
occupied. In such a condition Japan would 
even now be plunged, had she not established 
normal schools — and some excellent ones, 
too — for training teachers. This need of 
Japan, President Eliot pointed out a genera- 
tion ago. China has normal schools, but they 
are new, and they, too, lack proper teachers. 
The fact is that China went into this ■ great 
work of the education of a quarter of the 
population of the globe without proper pre- 
vision or provision. The mission schools and 
colleges, such as St. John's, at Shanghai, and 
the North China Union College, near Peking, 
are implored by the government officials to 
send teachers to the government schools ; but 
these colleges and others like them, in many 
cases, cannot, simply because the supply is 
inadequate. 

It may be said that the dearth of good 
teachers in the government schools of China 



156 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

should prove to be an impressive fact to the 
American man who is about graduating at 
his college. Teachers of English and of the 
sciences are specially needed. Many motives, 
selfward and altruistic, would urge him to go 
to China on graduation. He can earn twice 
as much money as a teacher in China as he 
can at home. He can gather up into his man- 
hood experiences, new, diverse, moving, and 
enriching. Whether he can do more good 
than at home is a personal question, in which 
a stranger should not meddle. But, if meet- 
ing responsive minds, eager and by nature 
strong, which are to become makers of other 
minds, represents an opportunity for doing 
much good, certainly the Chinese government 
schools represent a very rich opportunity. 

These difficulties which I thus outline are 
general and constant. The teachers now on 
the ground are dealing with them as best 
they may. Both foreign teachers and native 
are laboring together to lessen what obstacles 
they cannot remove, and to remove all that 
can be removed. The problem is hard. The 



THE NEW EDUCATION IN CHINA 157 

quantitative relation is significant. To educate 
four hundred millions is a problem unlike ed- 
ucating fifty millions, as in Japan. In their 
endeavors the present teachers of China de- 
serve sympathy. To condemn the inadequacy 
of Chinese education — and it is inadequate — 
means ignorance of the conditions. Sympathy 
should be given by the teachers of the world 
to their professional brethren in China, and 
reinforcements, too. 



IX 

THE CHINESE MENACE 

The Chinese menace, — what is it? It is the 
peril, says one, that the Chinese army and 
navy will conquer the armies and navies of 
the world : it is the menace martial. It is the 
peril, declares another, that the Chinese race, 
covering a quarter or a fifth of the entire 
population of the world, will submerge all 
other races and peoples : it is the menace eth- 
nological. It is the peril, affirms a third, that 
the arts and crafts of Chinese workmen, done 
at the barest living wage, will supplant the 
products of the workmen of all other lands : 
it is the menace industrial. It is the peril, 
asserts a fourth, that the social and religious 
institutions of the Chinese people will eventu- 
ally overcome the institutions of the so-called 
civilized nations : it is the menace sociological. 
All these perils, brought together and com- 
pounded into one great menace, become, be it 



THE CHINESE MENACE 159 

at once said, less menacing when seen and 
studied in China itself. The danger diminishes 
in proportion as one comes nearer to the dan- 
ger itself ; it increases with the square of the 
distance from it. 

For, above all other peoples, the Chinese 
want to be left alone, and they also want to 
leave other peoples alone. They believe in 
China for the Chinese. Even at the present 
time, with liberal policies more or less regnant, 
and with education an increasing force, the 
majority of this vast population would prefer 
to live unto themselves as well as to die unto 
themselves. They have always been sufficient 
unto themselves, they feel. Their standard of 
comfort may not be that of the Occident, but 
it is their own; and it is for them comfort- 
able. Why should these unaccountable and 
uncomfortable foreign devils come in to trou- 
ble them, and why should they trouble about 
these foreign devils ? Such is their mood. 

The Chinese, further, are not fighters. As 
a matter of fact, they are great cowards. One 
ought to see charades given at a Japanese 



160 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

theatre portraying the cowardice of the Chinese 
soldiers. Their tactics are good ; but what of 
tactics when soldiers run at the first discharge 
of the enemy's rifles? Their navy is no better 
than the army. Their men-of-war are hardly 
fitted to render service more efficient than police 
duty. No. The Chinese are an agricultural 
people, who want to be left on their ancestral 
acres, unmolested in their natural timidity. 
They prefer to keep their iron for pruning 
hooks and ploughshares rather than turn it 
into spears and swords. 

The Chinese menace, also, becomes less 
menacing when one knows of the prevalence 
of graft in the equipping of the Chinese army. 
No general can be assured that the ammuni- 
tion which he has ordered has been supplied 
in the amount and of the quality specified. 
No army can be assured that its officers are 
honest, able, efficient. Each man has his price, 
and somebody pays it. The Chinese army is 
as completely under the dominion of " squeeze " 
as was the Russian. The Chinese are far more 
avaricious than patriotic. 



THE CHINESE MENACE 161 

The patriotism of the people is also lacking. 
Socially the Chinese loves his country, politi- 
cally he is largely indifferent to her welfare. 
The contrast between China and Japan is com- 
plete and absolute. The Japanese prays to die 
for his country, for his Emperor. The Chinese 
flees before his foes. The government is not 
such as to awaken and to nourish the great 
virtues. It is an alien throne. The government 
is divided up into many satrapies. The gov- 
erning powers show little sympathy with the 
people. 

Neither are the people united by other 
great sentiments and passions. Resistance to 
taxation ? Most hard and long wars have been 
fought over questions of taxation. Civil wars 
and revolutions have thus arisen. But China 
seems willing to tax herself, and no foreign 
power is venturing at present to lay taxes 
upon her. Passion for some great leader? 
The leadership is lacking, and if it were not 
lacking, the passion probably would be. The 
great men of China are great men, but they 
do not call out the devotion which the great 



162 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

men of Japan evoke from their countrymen. 
The geographical expanse and the population 
are many-fold greater. In China it is difficult 
to bring a passion to a burning point. Reli- 
gion ? May not religion quicken the sentiment 
of this people and cause them to turn against 
a Christian world? The Boxer movement of 
nine years ago seems, on its face, to be such 
a revolution. Was it not a sort of sudden 
flaming forth as of the missionary zeal of 
Islamism? But this movement was confined 
to North China. It was a movement, too, quite 
as much political as religious. Moreover, it 
lacked intellectual direction and leadership. It 
was of the type of the mob. In a word, it 
would be hard to find any cause which would 
awaken the enthusiasm or lasting devotion of 
Chinese and Manchu, of metropolis and pro- 
vince, of the north, of the south, and of the 
west of China, of Confucianist and exotic 
Buddhist. 

Furthermore, behind the menace with which 
any nation can threaten the world is a force 
known as a national will. Two peoples have, 



THE CHINESE MENACE 163 

in the last two thousand years, manifested in 
a high degree such a will, the Roman and 
the English. The Roman went on, conquer- 
ing and to conquer. Defeated he was for the 
day ; but, not knowing that he was defeated, 
he was on the following day renewing the 
fight with vigor unspent and valor untarnished. 
In the end the Roman won, through the con- 
stant impact of a mightier will upon the forces 
of his foes. By much the same process England 
has become a master of the peoples whom she 
holds in a subjection more or less willing. No 
such will, either individual or national, do the 
Chinese possess. They lack force. A certain 
passive staying power the race has; but it 
lacks energy, momentum. The nation illus- 
trates one of the simplest laws of physics: 
momentum equals the product of mass and 
velocity. If either mass or velocity be zero, 
the product is also zero. China has mass ; it is 
enormous ; how enormous no one knows. But 
her velocity, applied to this mass, is nil, and 
the consequent result is also nil. 

Great nations, seeming to be on the point 



164 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

of conquering the world, have suddenly ceased 
their conquests. The Persians, the Arabians, 
the Turks have arisen, and have for a time 
borne down all opposition. Without sufficient 
apparent cause they retired from their battle, 
on sea and land, into their own plains or fast- 
nesses. Apparently they became exhausted, 
— they lacked a great and lasting will. Such 
lack I believe the Chinese would exhibit in spe- 
cial significance long before they had crossed 
the Himalayas or the Ural Mountains. 

What I have so far written has reference, 
I find, to the menace arising from war. This 
menace may, therefore, be cast aside. I fear I 
have considered it too seriously. 

The other perils are obviously more danger- 
ous, — ethnological, industrial, sociological ; 
but I cannot believe they do constitute men- 
aces. The Chinese have spread over the Straits 
Settlements. They have come into Canada ; 
they have come somewhat into the Pacific 
Coast cities of the United States. But they 
have not gone into other lands in appreciable 
numbers. The world is not China. They do 



THE CHINESE MENACE 165 

not show any such tendency to emigrate as 
the world charges them with possessing. Many 
nations in fact would be greatly benefited by 
the gift of a hundred thousand or a million 
of this hard-working, economical race. There 
is no danger of submersion. 

The industrial menace is also quite as re- 
mote. The American should, of all peoples, 
have the least fear of this peril. The Ameri- 
can brain, making the steel to think, can out- 
distance the manual working Chinese in the 
world's markets. China will never become a 
rival in the making of steel or iron. The 
Chinese farmer prefers cultivating his few an- 
cestral acres to building and managing large 
cotton or woolen factories or blast-furnaces. 
His institutions, too, social and religious, are 
his institutions, as are his industrial and com- 
mercial methods: he has no wish to impose 
them on the world. As I said in the beginning, 
he wants to be left alone, and he wants to let 
the world alone. Which desire is the stronger 
it is impossible to say. But even if the world 
will not let him alone, — see the American, 



166 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

English, German, and other soldiers in Peking, 
— he is, on the whole, willing to let the world 
alone. He, to quote a line from Matthew 
Arnold, " lets the legions thunder past." 



INDIA 



INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL AND 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

The need of technical and industrial education 
for India is urgent. The urgency arises from 
several conditions. Practical education in both 
its higher and lower ranges is required for the 
development of the country. More roads and 
better ones, more railroads and better ones, 
and more general and effective irrigation re- 
present three of the primary needs of this 
great empire. At the present moment the field 
of the needs which irrigation supplies, notwith- 
standing great works already in operation, is 
more impressive, and this field is representa- 
tive of other great wants. Some large areas 
of India suffer seriously for lack of rain. 
These paragraphs I write as I travel through 
one of these districts. As a result of the fail- 
ure of rains, a failure of crops is occurring. 
The people are hungry, and soon apparently 



170 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

many of them will be starving. This cause and 
consequence are working more or less regu- 
larly. The problem is therefore presented, 
and presented with an urgency which words 
can only intimate, to the engineer of devising 
a system of irrigation which shall save every 
decade millions of lives, and also save the 
civilized peoples of the world from harrowing 
tales of human suffering. 

In brief, the breadth of the opportunity 
for the work of the civil engineer, and of me- 
chanical, electrical, mining, and chemical engi- 
neers, can hardly be overestimated. For its 
whole material evolution, India calls for the 
service of such men. 

Furthermore, India needs technical educa- 
tion for her educational values. Indian edu- 
cation lacks directness in method, solidity, 
energy, definiteness in result. In certain re- 
spects she has been too liberalizing: she has 
been inclined to set the mind so far free that 
it has failed to respect its natural limitations. 
Technical education is in peril of intellectual 
and professional narrowness, but this very nar- 



INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 171 

rowness promotes directness, and may create 
force. It also offers a definite aim and a clearly 
outlined body of knowledge. Such an educa- 
tion the men of India greatly need. 

But it must be said that apparently neither 
the Indian mind by nature is fitted to receive 
such an education, nor does the Indian heart 
want it. The Indian mind prefers metaphysics 
to physics, logic and grammar to chemistry. 
It is rather literary than scientific. Teachers 
in schools and colleges — and many, too, with 
whom I have talked — seek to divert their 
students into courses leading to engineering 
and away from courses leading to the law, 
but the diversion seems somewhat unnatural 
and one hard to make. 

Moreover, in any discussion regarding In- 
dian education, it is never to be overlooked 
that the Indian student is poor in purse. The 
people, indeed, are poor ; and in India, as 
elsewhere, students as a body seldom come 
from a wealthy class. Many of them spend 
no more than fifty cents a day, and not a few 
less than fifty. Scientific education is the most 



172 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

costly of all types of education ; a legal edu- 
cation is the least expensive. On the simple 
ground of their costliness, some students turn 
aside from the technical courses. All India 
spends about two cents a day for each native. 

But, despite these difficulties, and under the 
influence of these motives, India is making 
progress in technical and industrial education. 

India has four colleges of engineering. 
Geographically they are well placed for serving 
the entire community. One is at Sibpur, near 
Calcutta ; one at Poona, near Bombay ; one 
at Madras, and one at Roorke, in the United 
Provinces. The one at Roorke, Thomason 
College, founded as early as 1848, was, in its 
first years, simply a training school for in- 
ferior officers for the Ganges Canal. With 
the growth of scientific knowledge, it has en- 
larged its curriculum as well as its constituency, 
has between three hundred and four hun- 
dred students, and the course occupies three 
years. Each of these colleges is equipped with 
the usual chemical, physical, and mechanical 
laboratories, and also with carpentry and 



INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 173 

machine shops. The work in all these colleges 
represents three orders or grades. The high- 
est order comprises what would be known in 
the United States as technical or engineering 
courses. Students in these courses are trained 
for the higher range of engineering work. 
Most of these men enter the great public 
works department of the government. They 
become in India, as in America, leaders in in- 
dustrial enterprises. A second order of train- 
ing is given in what may be called an ap- 
prentice department, the purpose of which 
is to train overseers and mechanical foremen. 
The work represents the higher grade of a 
trade - school. The course includes a large 
amount of mathematics, of physics, and of 
chemistry. About half the time is given to 
practical work, and about half to scholastic. 
In the third and lowest grade, mechanics and 
artisans are trained. Among the trades that 
are thus taught are printing, work in wood, 
metal, stone, and photography in various 
branches. 

In addition to these four engineering col- 



174 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

leges, there are also about one hundred and 
fifty industrial schools. These schools are of 
manifold origin. Some, and the more impor- 
tant ones, have been established by the gov- 
ernment; some by the individual towns or 
cities ; some by the missionary organizations ; 
and some by private initiative. It should be 
said that these, like other schools established 
by commissions and by individuals, are aided 
by grants made by the government. The sub- 
jects taught in all these schools are usually 
the four of carpentry, machine work, shoe- 
making, and tailoring. Those less generally 
offered are metal work, masonry, weaving, and 
carpet-making. The curriculum is determined 
somewhat by the local demand for men 
equipped in special trades ; but it would seem 
that this local demand has, on the whole, not 
been sufficiently heeded. 

It is to be said that, notwithstanding the 
general feeling that India ought to become a 
great manufacturing nation, it has been found 
difficult to persuade boys to attend these in- 
dustrial schools. The reason probably lies both 



INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 175 

in what is the confessed inefficiency of these 
schools themselves, and also in the reluctance 
of parents to give up certain financial advan- 
tages which they receive through their sons 
becoming apprentices under the old native sys- 
tem of learning a trade. 

In any review of the practical education 
of India, notice should be taken of two other 
forms of education, the commercial and agri- 
cultural. The demand for men specially trained 
for a commercial career is new, but it has 
recently become urgent. In Bombay, Allaha- 
bad, and Lucknow, there are schools in which 
men are specially trained for business careers. 
The training is designed, on the whole, to pre- 
pare men for clerical service. Bookkeeping, ste- 
nography, typewriting, and similar subjects 
are taught. 

Agriculture is the occupation of about three 
quarters of the population of India ; but the 
training in agriculture is as backward as it is 
essentially important to the welfare of these 
three hundred millions of people. Colleges 
of agriculture have been established at four 



176 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

places, and instruction in agriculture is also 
given in several of the industrial schools ; but 
these colleges are apparently no more prosper- 
ous than were the agricultural colleges of the 
United States in the first years of their exist- 
ence. They have not yet received the favor of 
the land-holding class, and they have so far 
been chiefly used, as formerly were those of 
the United States, in securing a general train- 
ing. 

All classes of the Indian community realize 
India's need of these four kinds of practical 
training. Government is willing to put im- 
mense sums into schools and colleges for pro- 
viding such training. The missionary boards, 
now giving a large interpretation to their great 
work, are eager to promote education of this 
type. Only yesterday an American missionary 
at Allahabad said to me that he would next 
year go home to take a course in agriculture, 
in order to prepare himself better for his spe- 
cial duties. The government has lately sent 
to the United States and to England about 
one hundred picked students to study engi- 



INDIA'S NEED OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 177 

neering. As a result of these and like efforts 
engineers are to come to India in large num- 
bers ; and when they have come to this old 
country which as regards engineering work 
is essentially new, they will help to create a 
New India indeed. In the creation of such 
a nation lies her salvation. 



XI 

THE HIGHEE EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 
IN INDIA 

The higher education for women in India is, 
like the lower education, beset by several and 
unique difficulties. 

Perhaps the most evident of these difficul- 
ties is the seclusion in which girls and women 
live. This seclusion applies to both Hindus 
and Mohammedans alike. As a daughter and 
as a wife, the home is at once woman's throne 
and prison. She is shielded, guarded, and 
guided. If she go abroad, she is carefully at- 
tended. Conversation with men outside the 
family is, according to some customs, impos- 
sible, or at least held under the closest super- 
vision. The whole tendency and all conditions 
of life in India result in keeping women within 
the stone walls of a little home and yard. An 
American teacher in Calcutta tells me that, 
after many and tactful overtures, she has 



HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 179 

recently obtained permission to visit a girl of 
twelve, who, since her marriage at the age of 
seven, has not left her house. Nor is this case 
unique. Even the profession of nursing in 
India is practically impossible for women, be- 
cause a woman going into a home is regarded 
as the subject of chaperonage. 

Early marriage, too, works toward the same 
result. Girls, who in the United States or Eng- 
land or Germany would be in the primary 
school, are either betrothed or married. I have 
seen many midgets wearing the necklace of 
black beads indicative of marriage. Marriage 
in India, as in America, prevents, or shortens the 
period of, education, of any grade or order. 

The principle of caste has a similar effect. 
This principle shuts both man and woman 
within the circle of certain inherited traditions 
and usages. It shuts out too as well as shuts in. 
If to those within it represents kindness and 
sympathy, toward those without it stands for 
cruelty. A man fallen from a palm tree is left 
to suffer for hours, in the fear that he is not of 
the caste of the passer-by. Even lepers recog- 



180 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

nize and practice the custom. At a Christmas 
feast which the children of a Christian school 
at Poona gave for the lepers of the city, the 
lepers of a higher caste obliged their fellow 
sufferers of a lower caste to eat outside the 
courtyard of the house while they were en- 
tertained within. To the requirements of the 
principle women seem more obedient than men. 
In the medical and other colleges men of differ- 
ent castes mingle together with a considerable 
degree of freedom. 

Many parents, moreover, are either indiffer- 
ent or opposed to the education of their daugh- 
ters. They are willing, in many cases, for them 
to be educated well enough to become wives. 
" How well is that ? " I asked a Japanese 
princess who made a similar remark about her 
people. " That," was her wise and witty reply, 
" depends on the husband." In India most 
husbands prefer a wife whose education is 
meagre. The reason is perhaps twofold. Most 
Indian men are ignorant, and do not want a 
wife who knows more than they. The idea is 
also common that education leads to inde- 



HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 181 

pendency; the educated wife is not so servile. 
Parents, therefore, fear that if they educate 
their daughters they will not be able to give 
them in marriage. 

These four reasons — seclusion, early mar- 
riage, caste, and the indifference or opposition 
of parents — are comprehended in the inter- 
pretation of the place and function of women 
as being narrowly domestic. In filling this 
place and performing the functions of the 
home, it is argued that the higher education 
is unnecessary, or indeed distinctly obstruc- 
tive. The objection is akin to that which was 
heard in the United States sixty or more years 
ago, although stated in a form less savage 
and materialistic. Indeed, the objection is one, 
apparently, almost as ancient as the race. 

To these difficulties in the way of their 
education it must also be confessed that the 
character of Hindu women adds no little force. 
The typical Hindu woman, from the Afghan- 
istan border to southern India, is slight in body, 
small in face, bearing in every line and move- 
ment the impression of a lack of strength in 



182 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

muscle, mind, and will. She is herself, prob- 
ably, the child of a mere child, and she a child 
will probably become the mother of other chil- 
dren also slight, small, and weak. A woman of 
this type is not fitted to overcome difficulties 
so tremendous as those she must meet in get- 
ting an education. Easily she submits to the 
apparently inevitable. 

If, however, the woman of India desires a 
liberal education, the opportunity is open. Col- 
leges, established by the government or by mis- 
sionaries, receive her. Most of these colleges 
were formed primarily for the education of 
men ; but into many of them women are read- 
ily admitted. The method represents a limited 
co-education. The number of women found in 
any one college is small, and the proportion to 
young men would be perhaps as one woman to 
twenty men. In most colleges the instruction 
is largely or entirely given through lectures, 
and both women and men are only auditors 
and note-takers. Some of the objections which 
have been found to co-education are thus 
avoided, through the absence of recitations. 



HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 183 

In India all scholastic degrees are given by 
five universities, — Calcutta, Allahabad, La- 
hore, Bombay, and Madras, — and by them 
alone formal examinations for degrees are set. 
Women, like men, present themselves in the 
examination rooms of these universities, and 
they are as free so to present themselves as are 
their brothers. If they pass, they also are re- 
commended to receive the proper degree. The 
first degree is that of B. A., and the second, 
like the American and English custom, that 
of M. A. Degrees in science, in medicine, and 
in law are also given. 

The number of women, out of a popula- 
tion more than threefold that of the United 
States, who have felt themselves called to en- 
dure the privations which stand in the way 
of getting a formal degree is still very small. 
After a half century of European higher edu- 
cation in India, that number is considerably 
less than a thousand. In fact, the proportion 
of liberally or professionally educated women 
in the vast empire is infinitesimal. 

The future which awaits the woman who has 



184 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

endured up to the Convocation at which she 
receives her degree is not unlike the future 
of the well-educated women of every country. 
Some, and the larger share of these capped 
and gowned ones, return to their homes and 
to their society and community, and seek to 
adjust themselves to the relations which home, 
society, and community represent. In India, 
as in America and England, they perform 
more efficiently the duties, and accept more 
graciously the rights belonging to these re- 
lations, by reason of their liberal education. 
The field of service and of enjoyment is, how- 
ever, far less broad and diverse in India than 
among the Western peoples. The adjustment 
is more difficult, and the results are in grave 
peril of being less satisfactory. The contrast 
between the life which the woman student 
and the woman graduate has lived and the 
life and living which are hers in her home 
may be marked and lamentable. She is in 
peril of falling back to the level of the en- 
vironment which was hers before she set out 
upon her educational career. 



HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 185 

A few women, however, crown their educa- 
tional career with the professional degree of 
Bachelor of Laws, or Bachelor of Teaching, 
or Doctor of Medicine. Few they are, but 
among these few are found women who are 
doing great service for India. The field of the 
law is the least promising of the three, but 
even here women are giving a good account 
of themselves. More, or most, are found in 
the schoolroom and in the doctor's office. The 
seclusion of many women from men, and from 
physicians who are men, opens wide and high 
the door of opportunity to the woman doctor. 
The service which is thus given is unspeakably 
precious. Next to the home, the schoolroom 
represents the favorite place of work for edu- 
cated women. Into schools, therefore, — gov- 
ernmental, private, missionary, — go these lib- 
erally trained graduates. In India, as in the 
West, they offer as effective teaching as women 
have ever given. 

The cause of the higher education of women 
in India moves slowly, but it does move. The 
progress of a year may be invisible; the ad- 



186 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

vance of a decade is clear. Even in a decade, 
however, there may be regress as well as pro- 
gress. But the movement of the tide is toward 
freedom and enlarged opportunity, both in se- 
curing the higher education and in using its 
personal and scholastic results. India is old, 
conservative, slow of change; but the future 
of women's higher education in India is as as- 
sured to the wise and far-seeing interpreter as 
the future of the higher education of Ameri- 

o 

can women was to Matthew Vassar forty years 
ago. 



XII 

"WHAT SHALL I DO?" THE QUESTION 
OF THE COLLEGE MAN IN INDIA 

To the liberally educated man of twenty-one 
years in India> as to the liberally educated 
man of the same age in America, the question 
"What shall I do ? " is of utmost seriousness. 
To the man of the East the question is at once 
harder and easier than to the man of the 
West. The Eastern man may find the prob- 
lem at least partially solved for him through 
the law of caste, and also by the custom of 
inherited vocation. He can hardly consider 
adopting a calling which should overcome the 
law of class distinction, upon which Indian 
society so largely rests. Unless, too, there be 
reason to the contrary, he follows the calling 
of his father. The present chief astronomer in 
Jaipur Province is the son and grandson of 
an astronomer, and so down, he believes, for 
generations. 



188 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Few college men of India enter either the 
native or the Christian priesthood. The can- 
didates for the Buddhistic priesthood are set 
apart for their offices at an early age, and we 
can therefore exclude them from our survey. 
The priests of the Hindu faith are few in 
number, and of the Mohammedan still fewer. 
It must also be said that the proportion of the 
Christian college men of India who enter into 
the Christian ministry is very small. One 
Christian college (of English foundation), 
founded fifty years ago, has sent only one 
graduate into the office of the minister. The 
results in most colleges are not so meagre. 
But, in general, the number of Christian 
students who become clergymen or evangelists 
is much smaller than a priori reasoning would 
lead one to believe. The causes are manifold, 
but the reason that is probably uppermost in 
the mind of the Indians themselves is the lack 
of responsibility given to the native ministry 
by the foreign missionaries. 

In India, as in too many countries, the 
graduate regards an office under the govern- 



WHAT SHALL I DO ? 189 

ment as the most desirable opportunity for a 
career. It represents an assured (though sel- 
dom large) income, permanence, and respect- 
ability. The difficulty of securing a proper 
place under the government, however, in- 
creases. Men of better training and of larger 
ability are constantly demanded. For most, 
too, these positions must always be clerical. 

The law as a possible profession, the Indian, 
as the American, graduate may consider. The 
field is great in India, as it is in America. 
Both peoples are fond of the luxury of litiga- 
tion. But the Indian finds, as does his Amer- 
ican brother, the profession much crowded. 
The remark is made almost as often in India 
as in the United States that there are too many 
lawyers. But no country has too many able 
lawyers. The field of opportunity, both pro- 
fessional and general, for the well-equipped 
Indian lawyer is rich. 

Teaching may attract the new graduate. 
Despite the astonishing backwardness of the 
people in education, schools and colleges are 
increasing in number and in efficiency. If 



190 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

altruistic impulses move the graduate, he can 
find no field more promising. Teaching in 
India, as everywhere, has philanthropy as its 
motive power. If pecuniary impulses move 
him, he may yet select this calling. The salary 
of a higher teacher usually runs from $400 to 
$800 a year. Incomes in India are small. The 
income of a family of eight persons, of the 
upper-middle class, would frequently not ex- 
ceed $200. The annual salary, therefore, of 
a teacher of $400 might become the object 
of avaricious ambition. Social motives, too, 
might or might not impel him. The social 
position of the teacher in India is quite akin 
to what it is in the United States, — made 
somewhat by the position, but more by 
the personality. A larger number of men 
should, and will in the future, find their career 
in teaching. Both as cause and result of the 
deeper interest in education, it is one of the 
noblest opportunities for human service given 
to the educated men of the East. 

In India, as in most countries, the science 
and art of medicine has made greater ad- 



WHAT SHALL I DO? 191 

van cement than any other profession. The 
medical schools in India are offering- essen- 
tially the same training which the English 
and Scotch schools offer. This training is not 
so good as that prescribed by the best Ameri- 
can schools ; but it is good. The graduate, 
therefore, comes forth well equipped for ser- 
vice among his countrymen. Among them the 
opportunity for service is indeed ample. This 
man, trained in European therapeutics and 
principles of diagnosis, finds himself brought 
into professional relationship with the physi- 
cian trained by native methods and using a 
native pharmacopoeia. These methods and rem- 
edies have a certain advantage of long-time 
prescription. The people, ignorant and super- 
stitious, may not easily accept the new learning 
or the new practice. But the conclusion is in- 
evitable. "The old order changeth," and must 
change. The new graduate in medicine, going 
into municipality or village community, finds 
the people defying most of the laws of good 
health. To prevent disease, both of the indi- 
vidual and the community, as well as to cure 



192 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

it, he has as rich a field as the most enthusi- 
astic could desire. 

The medical profession is the most individ- 
ualistic of all callings. But certain Hindus, of 
what might be called the public type of mind, 
are attracted toward editorship. Editorship is 
a vocation always open. All one need do is 
to start a newspaper. This not a few Indians, 
in these times of unrest, are inclined to do. The 
attempt usually is short-lived. Printers' bills 
must be paid. Too many of these sheets have 
as their chief theme the abuse of the govern- 
ment. One of the more conspicuous contained, 
for instance, in a recent issue this tirade : — 

Gridhra [vultures], jackals, and dogs are 
tearing away at the heart of your mother 
[country] : when will you wake if not now ? 
The Mother is still kind and still enormously 
rich. These riches you can enjoy. But without 
courage you won't be able to save the riches 
from the hands of robbers. Excel in the art of 
handling weapons, and run riot in the sweets 
of war ! ... To become the hirelings of for- 
eign rulers (which is the ways of dogs) is very 
nasty, and must be put an end to. In penury, 
rather obtain your livelihood by shopkeeping. 



WHAT SHALL I DO ? 193 

. . . The big palaces, with their worthless tin- 
selry, have been erected at your expense. They 
are your handiwork. By the force of your 
arm, they can be built up or leveled to the 
earth ! 

The legitimate field of journalism in India 
is small. What can be the demand for news- 
papers in a community in which only ten per 
cent of the men can read and less than one per 
cent of the women ? 

There are two other callings which the re- 
cent graduate may fittingly consider, engineer- 
ing and business. Of the need of engineers 
in India I have written at length in another 
chapter, and I shall not pause here even to in- 
timate the richness of the rewards, personal 
and altruistic, as well as financial, awaiting the 
engineer. I at once pass on to consider the 
field of business as a proper field for the choice 
of the liberally educated man of India. India 
needs more large-minded merchants. She has 
millions of small-minded merchants, who well 
embody the prejudice which Cicero, in one of 
his philosophical essays, expresses against the 
retail dealer. The opportunity for the mer- 



194 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

chant of large intellectual powers is one of 
the greatest. The difficulties, however, in the 
way of the well-educated man becoming a 
merchant are at least fourfold, — caste, lack 
of capital, ignorance of the world, and want 
of endurance. These difficulties are indeed 
serious. No one outside of India can appreciate 
how heavy is the weight which caste puts upon 
society and the individual. Its unreasonable- 
ness does not at all lessen its fateful inevita- 
bleness and crushingness. India, furthermore, 
is poor, though not so poor as is often believed. 
But large capital is not indigenous. Most of 
the banks, for instance, are of English origin. 
The Indian, too, is not a man of the world. 
He seldom goes beyond Bombay, Lahore, Cal- 
cutta, or Madras. He also meets few foreign- 
ers. He is not fitted by environment or train- 
ing to take his place with the great merchants 
of London. Further, he has not the enduring 
power, the virile force, of the Anglo-Saxon. 
It is, also, ever to be remembered that he lives 
in a climate in which it is hard to work more 
than six months of each year. These are some 



WHAT SHALL I DO ? 195 

of the difficulties which the college man must 
suffer in becoming a merchant. But he also, 
be it said, has certain advantages : he is indus- 
trious, he is economical, and he is accustomed 
to do much on a small income and capital. 

At the present time, next to the need of 
engineers, India needs great merchants, men 
great in their conception of commerce, great 
in their wisdom of the adjustment of means to 
ends, and also great in their command of credit 
and of capital. Such men India needs, in order 
to lift her from the small retail habit of trade, 
and also from the small retail habit of mind. 
This vocation of business, therefore, the large- 
minded and liberally educated man of India 
may fittingly consider as a career. 



XIII 

THE FUTURE OF INDIA 1 

The political future of India will be deter- 
mined by her present. If in that future one 
thing be more settled and evident than an- 
other, it is that England will retain India. 

Apparently no opponent can arise from 
without to expel England. If an opponent 
were to arise, he would come from either the 
North or the East. But Russia has for a long 
time, it would now seem, sufficient internal 
problems to consume her strength. China, 
too, is concerned with her own development ; 
and that development must progress with 
greater swiftness than it has for even the last 
revolutionary decade to create power enough 
to attack the Empire of India. China is, in- 
deed, awakening; but the sleep has been so 
long and so sound that many years will be re- 
quired for her to get her eyes clear open ; and 

1 Reprinted by permission of The North American Review. 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 197 

even when the eyes are fully open, other de- 
cades will be required to create and to organ- 
ize martial and other forces. No outside power, 
therefore, can loosen England's hold on India. 
The peril of an expulsive force arising 
within India itself is not so slight as the 
danger of an external foe ; but this peril is 
still slight. The three hundred millions of 
India's population are divided between four 
fifths Hindu and one fifth Mohammedan. 
These two peoples are enemies. In the recent 
discontent it was whispered that, after the Hin- 
dus had driven out the English, they would 
turn upon the Mohammedans. What one 
hates the other likes, and what one likes the 
other hates. In this recent discontent the fol- 
lowers of the Prophet were found on the 
side of the government. The disproportion in 
force between these two great bodies is by no 
means as great as the disproportion in num- 
bers. It has been said that the sixty millions 
of Mohammedans could drive the two hun- 
dred and fifty millions of Hindus into the 
Bay of Bengal. In this racial and religious 



198 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

antagonism lies much advantage for Eng- 
land. 

But the Hindus themselves are divided into 
many bodies. Languages and dialects are as 
different as they are among the different 
provinces of China. Social caste cuts gulfs 
which are apparently impassable. Sects are as 
numerous and as separate as are found among 
the adherents of the Protestant faith. The 
only method by which these alien units could 
be joined together into a compact lighting 
force would be the arising of a masterful 
leader, whose personality could be felt from 
Lahore to Tuticorin, from bay to ocean. The 
prospect of the appearance of such a Mahomet 
is so slight that it can be neglected in any 
forecast of the future. 

But even were such a martial prophet to 
spring up, he would find these separated 
hosts composed of men, weak and slight in 
body (with a few exceptions), without arms, 
ignorant of military and especially of artillery 
training, and, above all else, weak in aggres- 
sive will. The conditions which contributed 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 199 

to the terrible power of the mutiny of fifty- 
years ago he would find lacking. No native 
soldier is to-day enrolled in the artillery. A 
relatively larger force of English and smaller 
of Indian troops would meet him. He would 
find the railroad and the telegraph coming to 
the aid of his foe, as they did not in Delhi and 
Agra and Lucknow in the deadly marches 
of that dreadful summer of '57. No. The out- 
look for the military triumph of a great native 
leader is indeed slight. India would be quite 
as unable as either Russia or China to expel 
England. 

The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that 
England can stay in India just as long as 
she wants to. England, moreover, apparently 
wants to stay. The Englishman measures 
many values by their place in the budget : 
India pays her own bills. Indian taxes are 
sufficient to meet the cost of the English gov- 
ernment of India. But, more, India repre- 
sents the empire. The retirement of England 
would, to many, mean imperial disintegration. 
India, also, is a proper field for work for 



200 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

thousands and tens of thousands of English- 
men, who could not find in "little England" 
so fit opportunity for a career. Akin to this 
fact, it is to be noted that though trade does 
not necessarily follow the flag, yet the Eng- 
lish trade more easily and naturally follows 
the union jack than it does any other stand- 
ard. The inference, therefore, seems clear 
enough that England wishes to retain India. 
But, furthermore, it is best for India her- 
self that she be retained. India has usually 
been her own worst enemy. England saves 
India from herself. The testimony of native 
scholars and thinkers is conclusive that the re- 
tirement of England would be followed by 
civil wars. Mohammedan would rise against 
Hindu and Hindu against Mohammedan, 
Hindu sect against Hindu sect, and each cause 
the other to be put to death. In war, says 
Cicero, the laws are silent: not only are the 
laws silent, but also the loom, the potter's wheel, 
and the harvester's flail. War is the cessation 
of the industries, as well as of the industrious- 
ness, of peace. The inevitable civil wars, fol- 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 201 

lowing England's retirement, would prove to 
be the worst disaster which ever befell India, 
and her whole history has not been without 
severe disasters. 

It may also be said that it is best for the in- 
terests of the civilization of the world for Eng- 
land to retain India. If India be not fitted to 
govern herself, no other power than England 
is so well fitted to govern her. To the govern- 
ment of so-called inferior races England brings 
qualities which no other nation can bring. Eng- 
land does not bring sympathy, and is in peril 
of bringing a semi-contempt for these races. 
But, what is more important, it does bring a 
keen and large sense of justice, which is far 
more precious than either sympathy or per- 
sonal respect could prove to be. The Indian 
knows that the low court in his district or 
the high court at Madras is as sure of giving 
him his rights as any court that the mind of 
man could devise. Such an assurance is of 
the highest value to the Indian himself, and 
also to the interests of civilization. England, 
furthermore, governs under the conditions of 



202 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

religious freedom. Each man is able to wor- 
ship God according to the dictates of his own 
conscience, or not to worship. The right not 
to worship is, to some minds, made even more 
evident than the right to worship. For the 
government is accused of being atheistic and 
agnostic in its influence and tendency. But it 
is plain to any large-minded interpreter that 
an example of such freedom is of great worth 
to humanity in its struggle for light. 

Again, too, England makes use of the might- 
iest force in civilization for the highest advan- 
tage of India, — education. For fifty years the 
force has been specially used, and with enlarg- 
ing relationships and unto richer results. Only 
five per cent of the population is yet able to 
read and write ; but to the diminution of illit- 
eracy and the spread of learning England is 
devoting funds, and giving wisdom, too, with 
a fullness which is unique in the history of the 
government of a people by a foreign power, 
excepting, be it said, the United States in the 
Philippines. A large nation uneducated is not 
only a peril to itself, it is also a menace to all 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 203 

other nations. In her endeavor, therefore, to 
educate India England is promoting the high- 
est welfare of the world. 

The political future of India, therefore, 
seems to promise a continuation of her politi- 
cal present. That political future is, perhaps, 
the brightest of all the elements that consti- 
tute India's national power. Life is secure; pro- 
perty is safe ; taxation is Dot high, and is equi- 
table. Every Indian knows that he is as sure 
of receiving justice from English courts and 
English rule as through any government which 
the mind or hand of man could establish. 

The economic future of India, however, 
opens a prospect less favorable than the polit- 
ical. About three quarters of the laborers of 
India are agricultural. These farmers are small 
holders ; and their farms are cut up into 
small acreage. After many centuries of crop- 
pings of a soil, croppings made not once, but 
three or four times a year, this soil has in 
many parts become barren. It is said that in 
two hundred and fifty years the average yield 
per acre has lessened one half. The manure 



204 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

of cattle seldom goes back upon the land. It 
is collected and dried, and used as fuel. Cot- 
tonseed, too, an excellent fertilizer, it is found 
more profitable to export than to feed to cattle ; 
and the attempt to introduce modern tools of 
agriculture has largely failed, either because 
of their cost, or because of the inability of the 
farmer to use them properly, or to keep them 
in repair. As one who knows and loves India 
said to me, " A steel plough is better than a 
wooden stick, but what can an Indian farmer 
do when the point of a steel plough breaks ? " 
The village has no blacksmith who can mend 
it. The farming class lacks enterprise. Meth- 
ods are antiquated. Resources are small. A 
general air of helplessness seems to rest upon 
the whole farming community. 

The industrial community exhibits a condi- 
tion of marked improvements and of marked 
declines in recent years. In the decade follow- 
ing 1895 changes have occurred in more than 
a dozen industries: — 

1895 1904 

Cotton Mills 148 203 

Jute Mills 28 38 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 205 

Woolen Mills 5 6 

Cotton ginning, cleaning, and Press Mills . 610 951 

Flour Mills 72 42 

Rice Mills 87 127 

Sugar Factories 247 28 

Silk Filatures 89 75 

Silk Mills 28 11 

Tanneries 60 35 

Oil Mills 163 112 

Lace Factories 138 128 

Iron and Brass Foundries 64 89 

Indigo Factories * 8225 422 

The most significant of all the industrial 
developments is seen in the cotton industry. 
The Bombay mills give daily employment to 
about one hundred thousand factory opera- 
tives, while as many as thirty thousand more 
are maintained by the ginning presses. 

Some forty years ago we had only 13 cot- 
ton mills in all India. The number rose to 47 
in 1876, to 95 in 1886, to 155 in 1895, and 
to 203 in 1904 ; and to-day the number of our 
cotton mills is still larger. We had less than 
4000 power-looms forty years ago ; the num- 
ber was over 47,000 in 1904. We had less 
than 300,000 spindles forty years ago ; the 
number exceeded five millions in 1904. These 
are insignificant figures compared with the 
huge cotton industry of Lancashire ; but they 

1 The "Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 75. 



206 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

show that we have made steady progress, and 
that we may fairly hope to make greater pro- 
gress in the future if we are true to our aims and 
our own interests. Our annual produce of yarn 
is nearly six hundred million pounds in weight ; 
and it is interesting to note that out of this 
total out-turn about 30 per cent is used mostly 
by our hand-loom weavers. 1 

Socially, this change in the cotton and other 
industries is as evil as industrially it is advan- 
tageous. For it is important to preserve and 
to promote the domestic industries of this vast 
nation. Among all these domestic industries 
the hand-loom is, perhaps, the most important 
tool. A hand-loom has recently been invented 
which gives promise of being a great rival of 
the power-loom. But India is still importing 
about two thousand millions of yards of cotton 
cloth every year, and making only about six 
hundred million yards. The value of her im- 
ports of manufactured cotton goods is twice 
that of her exports of raw cotton. 

The industrial future of any country de- 
pends upon the supply of coal and iron. The 

1 Baroda, the " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 72. 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 207 

amount of coal, of iron ore, and other minerals 
hidden beneath the brown sands of India is 
still unknown. But it is probably not large. 
At present the greater share of Indian coal, 
about seven eighths, is mined in Bengal; but 
the amount taken out in all India in a year is 
only four per cent of that produced in Eng- 
land. India still depends upon England for 
those iron and steel goods in the making of 
which coal so largely enters. 

Indian industries have been and are prima- 
rily domestic. The question is seriously immi- 
nent whether the industrial movements of the 
world, producing goods through large facto- 
ries in immense quantities, are to overwhelm 
the home industries. At the Industrial Confer- 
ence held in Calcutta in December, 1906, the 
Gaekwar of Baroda said in the inaugural ad- 
dress : — 

We know, however, that the laborers who 
can possibly be employed in mills and factories 
form only an insignificant proportion of the 
industrial population of India. Very much the 
larger portion of that industrial population is 
engaged in indigenous industries carried on in 



208 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

village homes and bazaars. India is, and will 
always remain, a country of cottage indus- 
tries. Where hundreds of thousands can work 
in mills and factories, millions and tens of 
millions work in their own huts ; and the idea 
of greatly improving the condition of the 
laborers of India merely by adding to mills 
and factories is only possible for those who 
form their opinion six thousand miles away. 
No, gentlemen ; any comprehensive plan of im- 
proving the condition of our industrial classes 
must seek to help the dwellers in cottages. It 
is the humble weavers in towns and villages, 
the poor braziers and coppersmiths working in 
their sheds, the resourceless potters and iron- 
smiths and carpenters who follow their ances- 
tral vocations in their ancestral homes, who form 
the main portion of the industrial population, 
and who demand our sympathy and help. It is 
they (more than the agriculturists, or the mill 
and factory laborers) that are most impover- 
ished in these days, and are the first victims to 
famines ; and if your Swadeshi movement has 
brought some relief to these obscure and unno- 
ticed millions and tens of millions in India, as I 
have reason to believe it has done to a percepti- 
ble extent, if it has created a larger demand for 
their manufactures, widened the sphere of their 
labors, and brought some light to their dark 
and cheerless homes, then the movement, gen- 
tlemen, has my cordial sympathy. Help and 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 209 

encourage the large industries, but foster and 
help also the humbler industries, in which tens 
of millions of village artisans are engaged, and 
the people of India, as well as those who are 
engaged in the work of administration, will 
bless your work. 1 

Words well spoken are these ; for in most 
parts of the world the large manufacturer has 
supplanted or suppressed the small. If this 
condition shall come to obtain in India, the 
economic future of the nation is indeed dark. 

The future of any great people, or small 
too, is wrapped up largely also in their social 
system. The social system of India is founded 
upon caste ; and with the system of caste is 
specially involved the condition of woman. 
The evils of caste are so great that no one should 
presume to interpret them who has not been 
brought up in their atmosphere. Regarding 
caste, I venture to quote from the address 
given at the eighteenth session of the Indian 
National Social Conference, held at Bombay 
in December, 1904, by the Gaekwar of Baroda. 
He says : — 

1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 76. 



210 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

The evils of caste cover the whole range of 
social life. It hampers the life of the individual 
with a vast number of petty rules and observ- 
ances which have no meaning. It cripples him 
in his relations with his family, in his marriage, 
in the education of his children, and espe- 
cially in his life. It weakens the economic 
position by attempting to confine him to par- 
ticular trades, by preventing him from learning 
the culture of the West, and by giving him 
an exaggerated view of his knowledge and 
importance. It cripples his professional life 
by increasing distrust, treachery, and jealousy, 
hampering a free use of others' abilities, and 
ruins his social life by increasing exclusiveness, 
restricting the opportunities of social inter- 
course, and preventing that intellectual devel- 
opment on which the prosperity of any class 
most depends. In the wider spheres of life, in 
municipal or local affairs, it destroys all hope 
of local patriotism, of work for the common 
good, by thrusting forward the interests of the 
caste as opposed to those of the community, 
and by making combined efforts for the com- 
mon good exceedingly difficult. But its most 
serious offense is its effect on national life and 
national unity. It intensifies local dissensions 
and diverse interests, and obscures great na- 
tional ideals and interests which should be 
those of every caste and people, and renders 
the country disunited and incapable of im- 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 211 

proving its defects or of availing- itself o£ 
those advantages which it should gain from 
contact with the civilization of the West. It 
robs us of our humanity by insisting on the 
degradation of some of our fellow men who 
are separated from us by no more than the 
accident of birth. It prevents the noble and 
charitable impulses which have done so much 
for the improvement and mutual benefit of 
European society. It prevents our making 
the most of all the various abilities of our 
diverse communities. It diminishes all our 
emotional activities and intellectual resources. 
Again, it is the most conservative element in 
our society, and the steady enemy to all re- 
form. Every reformer who has endeavored to 
secure the advance of our society has been 
driven out of it by the operation of caste. By 
its rigidity, it preserves ignorant superstitions 
and clings to the past, while it does nothing 
to make those inevitable changes which na- 
ture is ever pressing on us more easy and 
more possible. 1 

That caste is still powerful, not only in 
general society, but even among Indian Chris- 
tians, is sadly evident. One of the most phil- 
osophic and eminent of American clergymen 
living in India, the Reverend Doctor J. P. 

1 The "Ruling Chiefs of India" Series, No. l,pp. 52, 53. 



212 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Jones, of Madura, declares that the church in 
India is "a very much caste-ridden church." 
He says in detail : — 

And yet such is the fact. Very few, if any, 
native Christians free themselves from this 
bondage when they enter the Christian fold. 
They still think that their life must be so- 
cially controlled by the Hindu caste system. 

They freely shake off the trammels of idol- 
atry and of Hindu ceremonial. They even 
learn to forget many of the ancestral super- 
stitions. But the caste ties remain largely un- 
relaxed. Their social ties and affinities in the 
Christian church are largely circumscribed by 
their Hindu social antecedents. 

And thus the infant Indian church, save 
at certain mission centres, is still a very much 
caste-ridden church. 

1. Its local sympathies are aligned along 
Hindu-made social strata. 

2. Marriages are contracted almost invari- 
ably on strict Hindu caste lines. Mixed or 
inter-caste marriages are still the exception. 

3. Social pleasures are largely confined to 
those of the same caste. 

4. Christian congregations are limited to a 
considerable extent to members of one caste. 
Members of other castes have little idea of join- 
ing them ; nor have the Christians, often, any 
desire to gather them into their Christian fold. 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 213 

5. In the choice and employment of cate- 
chists and pastors for the care of village 
churches and congregations, their caste ante- 
cedents can rarely, if ever, be ignored. And 
thus every missionary is much handicapped 
in the delicate work of securing the best spirit- 
ual agency for his field. 1 

Woman in India is chiefly or only a wife and 
a mother. Each condition represents a period 
of servitude. The servitude of the wife follows 
the servitude of the daughter, and is in turn 
succeeded by the servitude of the widow to her 
son, in case she becomes a widow. 

She is married early. The nuptials may be 
made long before she reaches her teens. Her 
first child is born also early, and is born to 
her in ignorance so great that it usually dies. 
But the following multiplication of children 
is so rapid that each comes into life small and 
puny, and comes into a home in which food is 
scarce, work heavy, and comforts few or none. 
Yet polygamy is not uncommon, and the re- 
marriage of a widow is prohibited. To the 

1 The Indian Church and Caste, by the Rev. J. P. Jones, 
D. D. p. 2. 



214 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

husband is given the right of putting away 
his wife if she fail to bear children, or even 
for causes less serious, and possibly not under 
her immediate control. Purdah secludes women 
from society. Young do women become old, 
and young do they die. 

The religion of a nation is at once a chief 
cause and result of its civilization. The religion 
of India is religions. Three fourths of the peo- 
ple are adherents of Hinduism. The remain- 
ing quarter is largely composed of Mohamme- 
dans, with Buddhists, Sikhs, and Christians 
following in smaller proportions. Hinduism, 
in its larger relations, is a great system of faith. 
But in its interpretation by the people it is a 
conglomeration of irrational beliefs and blind 
superstitions. It is a sad fact that, in the his- 
tory of religions, the less worthy elements of 
belief seem to make the stronger appeal to the 
great body of people. The esoteric faith ap- 
pears quite unlike the exoteric, and far supe- 
rior to it. No one can visit the temples in 
Benares, in which a sacred bull and sacred 
cows convert marble halls into filthy stables, 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 215 

and in which worshipers as devout as they are 
irrational perform rites which cannot be de- 
scribed, and no one can sail of a morning along 
the Ganges and witness the drinking of the 
filthy water by the pilgrims, without being 
stirred in heart and mind unto shame and 
disgust. If, however, one turn to the bet- 
ter of the sacred books of these same uncon- 
sciously shameless idolaters, or if he confer in 
person with the priests of these faiths, he is im- 
pressed by the nobility of the ethical princi- 
ples, and by the truth of the theistic beliefs 
which they profess. It must be said, however, 
that ninety-nine one hundredths of the Hindu 
people of India accept a faith without reason- 
ing, follow its teachings without questioning, 
and obey its severest commands without flinch- 
ing. Under such conditions lie no hopes for 
the upbuilding of a great and strong nation. 
The force most general of application for 
the promotion of the highest elements of civ- 
ilization in India is educational. Education 
meets with great difficulties, however. Chief is 
the indifference of the people, and next their 



216 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

poverty. Apathy prevents parents from wish- 
ing to educate their children, and poverty pre- 
vents their giving them an education. Poverty 
renders the support of all schools difficult, and 
prompts parents to put their children to work 
early in order to increase the small income 
of the family. The education of girls labors, 
in addition, under the peculiar difficulties of 
seclusion, caste, and early marriage. Educa- 
tion should be made by gradual processes com- 
pulsory, and also free, despite the heavy ad- 
dition resulting to the tax budget. As the 
Gaekwar of Baroda has said : — 

Great and far-reaching changes might be 
made in the educational system of the country, 
and I am of the opinion that no ultimate so- 
lution of our problem will be reached until 
schools have been provided in every village, 
and education is taken to the very thresholds 
of the people ; until, in fact, education, at 
least in its primary grades, has been made 
free and compulsory throughout the land. 1 

The manual and technical side of education 
should receive as great a development as the 

1 Baroda, the "Ruling Chiefs of India" Series, No. 1, 
p. 84. 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 217 

primary side. The general value of such, an 
education is hardly less than its industrial 
worth, for scientific training would give the 
Indian a discipline in definite and direct pro- 
cesses of thinking, of which he stands in dire 
need. However great may be the value at- 
tached to linguistic and philosophic studies, 
this value is less great for the Indian youth at 
the present time than the value of scientific 
training. Herein lies one hope for India. If 
technical and scientific education could be 
pursued by hundreds of thousands instead of 
by thousands, as it is at present, India would 
be lifted, enlarged, enriched. To quote again 
from the Gaekwar of Baroda : — 

I must confess that it is my recent visit to 
Europe and to America that has impressed me 
most with the immense importance of techni- 
cal education in promoting the industries of 
nations. I may state without exaggeration that 
education has undergone a complete revolution 
in the West within the present generation. 
The great armaments of the Western nations, 
their vast armies and navies, do not receive 
greater attention and greater solicitude in the 
present day than that education in industrial 



218 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

pursuit which befits them for the keener strug- 
gle, which is continually going on among 
nations for industrial and manufacturing su- 
premacy. 1 

But the strength or weakness of the people, 
their prosperity or their failure, lies not so much 
in conditions as in themselves. In themselves 
are found the elements of gravest foreboding 
for their character. They lack strength, — 
strength of will, strength of reasoning intel- 
lect. They do not have initiative. They see 
truth with their feelings, and the emotional 
vision is stronger than either the reasoned con- 
clusion of conscience or the act of will. They 
see truth with greater facility than they follow 
its duties in unflagging endurance. They do 
not possess the sense of large and exact truth- 
fulness. Lord Curzon told them plainly that 
exaggeration was characteristic of the nation, 
and they hated him for his frankness. 

Furthermore, the people of India do not 
have faith in themselves as individuals. The 
faith of the nation in itself seems to be strong, 

1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 84. 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 219 

but the faith of each man in and for himself 
seems to be lacking. The decline of the nation 
for fourteen hundred years has affected the 
spirit of the individual quite as much as the 
spirit of the nation. Upon this important 
point, as upon others, I quote from an address 
made by the Gaekwar of Baroda : — 

From 500 a. d. we find a steady decline in 
the political and mental condition of the coun- 
try down to the two centuries of darkness from 
which we emerge into the periods of Rajput 
and the Mahomedan conquest. Follow the for- 
tunes of India down the next eight centuries 
and note the steady decline in Hindu power 
both political and mental, till we come to the 
time when Europeans obtain a firm footing in 
India, and conquer the country with very slen- 
der means, meeting and conquering each prob- 
lem as it arises. For fourteen hundred years 
the record is one of steady decline in political 
and mental nationality. 1 

The Gaekwar also says : — 

Our weakness lies in this, that we have for 
many years lain prostrate under the fictitious 
sense of our own helplessness and made no 
adequate attempt to react against our circum- 

1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, p. 44. 



220 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

stances. We have succumbed where we should 
have exhausted every possibility of resistance 
and remedy. 

Without self-confidence you can never do 
anything; you will never found an industry 
or build up a trade, for you have nothing to 
carry you through the first anxious years when 
the only dividend is Hope, and the best assets 
are unfaltering courage and faith in one's self. 
And without confidence in one another you 
will never have a credit system, and without a 
credit system no modern commerce can exist. 
It is this want of cooperation and mutual dis- 
trust which paralyze Indian industry, ruin 
the statesman, and discredit the individual 
even in his own household. I believe that this 
trait of our character, though in some cases 
arising from our obvious defects and instances 
of actual misconduct among ourselves, is 
mainly due to the fact that the nation has long 
been split up into incoherent units, but also 
to the ignorance and restricted vision which 
result from our own exclusiveness. We have 
denied ourselves the illuminating experience 
of foreign travel, and are too prone to ima- 
gine that our weaknesses are confined to India. 
Failures and defalcations are as common in 
Europe as among ourselves ; and yet we allow 
ourselves to be too easily discouraged by such 
incidents. Hence arises a habit of censorious 



THE FUTURE OF INDIA 221 

judgment, a disposition to put the worst con- 
struction on the conduct of our friends and 
relatives without trying to find the truth, which 
destroys all trust and tolerance. Our view of 
the conduct of friends, of the policy of admin- 
istrations, of the success and integrity of com- 
mercial undertakings, are all vitiated by a readi- 
ness to believe the worst. It is only when we 
learn to suspend judgment, and know the man 
and the motive before we criticise, that we 
shall be able to repose trust where trust is due. 
We must stiffen our character, and educate 
ourselves up to a higher moral standard. 1 

Not long before his death the late Charles 
Cuthbert Hall wrote to a friend, saying, " I 
exult that I received my wound on God's great 
battlefield." India is a great battlefield of God, 
and, it may be added, of man. The conflict is 
to be long and hard. The forces are many, di- 
verse in character, and diverse also in strength 
and aggressiveness. The contest will go on for 
how many generations one knows not, under 
the English flag. In its waging, Western in dus- 
tries, Western religion, and Western education 
have a large part. Through them, and their 

1 The " Ruling Chiefs of India " Series, No. 1, pp. 26, 41,42. 



222 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

allies, it may be hoped that India will be quick- 
ened into a finer life, even than that which 
was hers before her decline of fourteen cen- 
turies ago. 



AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC 



XIV 

SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 

The problem of self-protection is the most 
important problem of a nation. The term has 
come to be used in a sense somewhat unlike 
that in which it is used in the expression "pro- 
tection and free trade." The larger sense is 
probably a more important and significant one 
than can be attached to it in the economic 
meaning:. As the United States has come to 
cover tropical territory, self - protection has 
become one of its problems. This problem is 
presented in a microcosm in the territory of 
Hawaii. 

The problem of self -protection is a negative 
part or side of the larger problem of greatest 
productivity ; the problem, to wit, of getting 
the most from earth and air and sea. It is the 
problem both of preservation of forests and 
of the enlargement of forest area. It is the 
problem of the introduction of new plants 



226 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

and fruits and the improvement of old ones. 
It is the problem, also, which belongs to the 
increase and improvement of domestic animals. 
It is a problem which concerns those lands 
where frosts never fall to purify. It is, in a 
word, the problem of the efficiency of nature. 
The problem is essentially a scientific one. It 
must be interpreted and defined in the terms 
of science, solved by the processes of science, 
and its results must be applied under the cate- 
gories of science. 

The enemies from which vegetation in the 
Hawaiian Islands suffers, and from which it 
must be protected, are of two kinds, but the 
number of varieties under each of these kinds 
is great. These two kinds are insects and 
fungi. Some of these pests are native, others 
are the result of importation. Perhaps what 
might be called the most spectacular of all these 
foes is one known as the cane leaf-hopper. 
The leaf -hopper came to the islands one hardly 
knows whence, but probably from either Aus- 
tralia or China. The exact time of its coming 
is also unknown, for it may have been here 



SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 227 

for years before it was recognized as pestifer- 
ous. But surely it came, this little insect of a 
quarter of an inch in length. It came, and it 
spread over the fields of cane to the number 
of countless millions. It threatened to destroy 
these vast fields of waving stalks, and it did 
succeed in lessening the productivity of many 
a plantation. The problem was to find a de- 
stroyer for this destroyer. Two scientists took 
upon themselves to make the discovery. They 
went to Australia, where it was known that 
the pest had existed. By living in fields and 
swamps infested with this insect, by investi- 
gation, by observation and the application of 
all scientific methods, they found a parasite 
for the leaf -hopper. The parasite was brought 
to the plantations of the islands. A little in- 
sect it was itself, laying its egg inside the egg 
of the leaf-hopper, and killing the egg. The 
parasite was introduced, propagated, and dis- 
seminated. After half a dozen years the leaf- 
hopper, which at one time threatened to de- 
stroy the whole sugar industry, became al- 
most a curiosity so small was his tribe. 



228 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

The problem of self-protection is also seen 
in the extreme care taken regarding the intro- 
duction of any plant or animal into the ter- 
ritory of Hawaii. One might possibly smuggle 
in a small bug or a garter-snake, but it would 
be practically impossible to bring in a box 
of either. Inspectors inspect each landing ; 
and importations which do not pass may suf- 
fer either fumigation, return, or destruction. 
Many instances I might cite, but a few are 
typical. (1) Sugar cane cuttings came in by 
mail from Queensland in two packages. In- 
spection proved that the cane had been at- 
tacked by a skin fungus, and that "mealy 
bugs " were hidden at the base of the leaves. 
(2) Another package of sugar cane was en- 
tered from the Philippine Islands, which bore 
evidence of attacks of the cane borer. Both 
these importations were burned. In the past 
year more than two hundred thousand pack- 
ages of fruits and vegetables have been in- 
spected, of which almost seven hundred have 
been either returned or destroyed either as be- 
ing infested with insects or as containing germs 



SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 229 

of disease. Rice from Japan to the amount of 
more than twenty thousand sacks was at one 
time fumigated, to kill out the larvae of a small 
brown beetle and other pests. Soil, brought as 
ballast, has been dumped into the ocean out- 
side the harbor, because it contained vegetable 
roots or matter which proved pestiferous. As 
I write I learn of some thousand packages of 
Japanese rice being fumigated. Fumigation 
does not seem to hurt the kernel in any way. 
Perhaps no instance is more picturesquely 
recognized by the Hawaiian people in the 
care taken to prevent dangerous introductions 
than is found in a case of the importation of 
snakes (designed for exhibition) a few years 
ago. The story is well told in the second re- 
port of the Board of Commissioners of Agri- 
culture and Forestry. The Hawaiian Islands 
have always been famed for their freedom 
from snakes. People and animals could wan- 
der with impunity through valleys and over 
hills and mountains. 

An importation arrived on the 2d of June 
ex S. S. Alameda from California, that might 



230 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

have put an end to such delightful serenity. 
This was the arrival of three flimsy boxes, 
containing fourteen large, living snakes, five 
of them the deadly rattler. Under a rule 
such animals arriving in the territory of 
Hawaii are ordered to be immediately de- 
stroyed or deported. "In the destruction of 
snakes," says the narrator, " we had a sur- 
prising experience. I placed the boxes of snakes 
in one of our fumigating chambers and ap- 
plied a charge of double density of hydro- 
cyanic acid gas, and the snakes were still alive 
at the end of fifteen minutes, whereas, if they 
had been warm-blooded animals they would 
have succumbed in a less number of seconds. 
They were again shut up and a quadruple 
charge of that deadly gas was administered, 
and at the end of one hour and a half the 
fumigator was opened and several of the 
snakes still showed signs of life. We then 
immersed them in 95% of alcohol, and that 
soon put an end to their venomous existence. 
A fitting death, as the same liquid, in a modi- 
fied form, is considered an antidote to their 
deadly bite." 

But many beneficial insects beside the par- 
asite which killed out the leaf-hopper have 
been introduced. Among them have been 
dung beetles, or what are known as "turn- 



SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 231 

ble-bugs," mosquito minnows, and various 
families and colonies of the lady-bird. There 
lies before me a list of no less than twenty- 
three colonies of beneficial species of insects 
which have recently been distributed about 
the islands. The number of these colonies is 
more than three hundred and fifty, and they 
aggregate some five thousand specimens. 

But the scientists of these islands are not 
content with negative methods or experimen- 
tation. Endeavors are constantly made to im- 
prove the forms of vegetation which are most 
important in these islands. Experimentation 
with new varieties of sugar cane is constantly 
going forward. Some of these experiments 
give promise of securing growths far more 
heavily laden with sugar juice than are the 
ordinary types. The process of experimenta- 
tion includes many elements. The new varie- 
ties are raised from seedlings. Out of some 
five thousand seedlings of recent times there 
emerged only twenty-one varieties that seemed 
worthy of further study or development. But 
already, out of these twenty-one, have ap- 



232 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

peared one or two varieties which give pres- 
ent promise of a vast increase in sugar juice. 
In case any such result should finally emerge, 
it would increase the productivity of these 
acres manifold. 

But though the sugar industry is the chief 
industry of these islands, and is the one to 
which scientific methods have been specially 
applied, it is not the only form of nature's 
productivity which has scientific relations. 
The fruits of Hawaii are many, and are pre- 
cious to the taste of man as well as to his 
purse. Science is applying herself to scores 
of these fruits, both for the purpose of secur- 
ing a richer yield and a better flavor. Sci- 
ence also is concerned with their marketing 
as well as their raising. 

The scientific work touching the various 
plants and fruits of these islands is done by 
three institutions. One is the Board of Com- 
missioners of Agriculture and Forestry of the 
Territory of Hawaii, one the Federal Experi- 
ment Station, and one the Hawaiian Sugar 
Planters' Association. 



SCIENCE AS A NATION'S PROTECTOR 233 

The first, as the name indicates, is the 
creation of the Territorial Government; the 
second is an institution of the General Gov- 
ernment ; the third is a society, as its title 
intimates, organized by and among the sugar 
planters themselves. The first is, of course, 
supported by the Territorial, the second by 
the General, government, and the third by the 
sugar planters. Of the three the Sugar Plant- 
ers' is the most unique. It is the largest soci- 
ety organized anywhere for the protection of 
the sugar industry. It includes a laboratory 
of chemistry, of pathology, of physiology, and 
of entomology. It enrolls a score of workers 
gathered from South America, from the West 
Indies, and from the Malay Peninsula. Ox- 
ford, Cambridge, the University of London, 
as well as several American colleges, are 
represented among its members. The plant- 
ers voluntarily give about seventy thousand 
dollars a year for the support of this work, 
the amount given by each plantation being 
in proportion to the amount of sugar pro- 
duced. 



234 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

Hawaii is one of the most impressive illus- 
trations in the whole world of the worth of 
science in the promotion of the material wel- 
fare and happiness of man. 



XY 

GEEAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The motives which have led a few thousand 
Americans to the Philippines in the last years 
for either a brief or a prolonged stay are as 
diverse as are the characters of these men them- 
selves. But more common is the motive pe- 
cuniary, and also the motive of interest in the 
great human problem of the civilization of 
these islands. The motive pecuniary has not 
proved so conclusive as its promise indicated. 
Some of the funds put into large undertakings 
— street railroads and electric power plants — 
have begun to make returns; but the returns 
are not worthily remunerative. Some seven 
hundred miles of steam railroad are now 
under construction, besides two hundred al- 
ready built, and give no present income. The 
merchant is prosperous, but not with a pros- 
perity which need awaken the jealousy of his 
American brother. Those who have come to 



236 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

the Philippines upon a salary — and they are 
by far the larger number — find that this sal- 
ary is considerably larger than they would 
receive in the States. In some cases it is no 
less than threefold, and in many twofold. 
But its purchasing power, its value in utili- 
ties, is not larger than the ordinary and nor- 
mal salary received at home. The professor 
in an American law school in Michigan or 
Wisconsin receiving three thousand dollars a 
year, coming to the islands as a member of 
the Supreme Court is given ten thousand dol- 
lars as an annual stipend; but in Manila he 
finds it is quite as necessary to spend ten 
thousand dollars as to spend three thousand 
in Ann Arbor or Madison. Prices are high. 
Entertaining, in particular, is constant and 
somewhat elaborate. 

Not a larger but a more important number 
of Americans have come under the spell of 
the interest in the foundation and fostering: 
of American institutions in these islands of 
the Far East. To establish a political demo- 
cracy among warring tribes ; to found social 



- 



GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 237 

institutions among men ■whose life is bare 
and barren ; to promote the element of rea- 
sonableness among tribes in which supersti- 
tion has largely ruled; to enrich, if not to 
establish, civilization, under American influ- 
ences, in the Philippines ; to have a hand, a 
heart, and a head in doing these and many- 
other things, industrial, educational, hygienic, 
administrative, — has been the motive which 
has brought men to and has kept and still 
keeps not a few — jind them of the best — 
men in these islands./ 

This human motive rather enlarges in in- 
terest and forcefulness with the passing years. 
For the contrast between the English method 
of governing, as seen in her great and unique 
field of India, and the American method as 
manifest in the small field of the Philippines, 
becomes increasingly evident. England gov- 
erns India a great deal as Eome governed her 
provinces, leaving to the subject state the en- 
joyment of most social and domestic institu- 
tions, compelling the people to recognize the 
sovereignty of the conqueror, with little or no 



238 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

thought of the coming of the time when the 
foreign ruler can retire. The United States, 
on the contrary, is in the Philippines in order 
to hasten the time when the presence of its 
soldiers and civilians may become absolutely 
superfluous, — so complete has become the 
absorption of the noblest American influ- 
ences, and so fundamental and thorough has 
been the acceptance of American institutions. 
The contrast is deep, very deep. The Ameri- 
can method in the Philippines cannot, and it 
does not, fail to move American men of altru- 
istic temper, of hopeful temperaments, of clear 
and profound intellectual insight and of great 
human instincts, to give themselves to service 
in these far-off parts of the world. 

The contrast between the conduct of Amer- 
ica in the Philippines and of Japan in Korea 
is likewise impressive. The population of 
Korea is only slightly larger than the popu- 
lation of the Philippines. Each people might 
be called a belated nation. Japan is feeling 
her way somewhat in her administration of 
Korea. But who doubts that the primary aim 



GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 239 

of Japan in Korea is to benefit Japan? But 
the primary aim at the present time of Amer- 
ica in the Philippines is to benefit the people 
themselves. With noble interest will the world 
watch the methods and the results of the 
government of two subject provinces by two 
commanding nations. 

The men who, under the influence of either 
the egoistic or the altruistic motive, or both, 
have come to the Philippines in the decade since ! 

America has had an interest in them repre-' 

I 

sent the noblest elements of American man- 
hood. I compare these men — judges, commis- 
sioners, officials of all grades — with similar 
civilians whom England has sent to India and 
to many colonies and provinces. I compare 
them with the foreigners of several nationalities 
who have taken up residence and work in world- 
cities like Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama. 
The result of the comparison is, on the whole, 
favorable to the American. In intellectual and 
moral strength, in insight, comprehensiveness, 
solidity and sobriety, integrity, efficiency, the 
American is superior. The more free and em- 



240 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

phatic I wish to be in this judgment, for when 
I set foot in Manila I had no thought I should 
find men of such greatness. But the conclu- 
sion was inevitable, — America has given of 
her best. 

In this condition are two elements specially 
significant. One is the lack of home partisan- 
ship in the making of civil appointments. Of 
course, the Civil Service rules shut out partisan- 
ship to a large extent; but in offices which 
are not under these rules, partisanship plays 
a very insignificant part. " I don't know," said 
a conspicuous citizen of Manila, " whether Gov- 
ernor-General Smith is a Republican or a Dem- 
ocrat." Happy is it that the home political 
divisions have not been transported to the is- 
lands. The good of the service is a rule which 
has been well followed. Efficiency has been, 
is, and will be the test. 

The other element of special worth lies in 
the fact that so many of the men in the Phil- ] 
ippines are college men. The men of liberal : 
education, men of the whole world, represent 
the great human qualities of sympathy, justice, 



GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 241 

culture, noble appreciations. Such men are the 
most valuable members of any society. These 
men to the number of several thousand are! 
giving themselves to this new people of the] 
Pacific. The college man rather than the mili- 
tary man is influential. The University Club ; 
on the Lunetta is more significant than Fort 
McKinley. 

These men, engaged either officially or per- 
sonally in this great work, are as a body filled 
with the spirit of hopefulness. They believe 
that great results for humanity and for Amer- 
ica are to be the final conclusion of this occu- 
pation. " We are to win " ; " We cannot fail " ; 
" We must not permit ourselves to think of 
retirement till this child people has come to 
mature strength " : such are the common senti- 
ments. These sentiments have greatly strength- 
ened in the last twelvemonth. The peace on 
the whole increasing among all the tribes, the 
calling and excellent conduct of the first Phil- 
ippine Assembly, the enlarging establishment 
of the institutions of the higher civilization, — 
churches, schools, clubs, — have each made a 



242 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

worthy contribution to the optimistic spirit. 
Moreover, as it has become evident that, de- 
spite heavy administrative expenditures, the 
United States will not surrender the islands, 
a policy of making investments in great utili- 
ties, and small as well, has been adopted. The 
spirit of pessimism prevailing a few years ago, 
as it is said, has passed away. Manila has be- 
come the city of the optimist. 

The wise people of the islands, however, as 
the wise people at home, know well that the 
solution of the American problem is to take a 
long time. Civilization demands not years, but 
decades; not decades, but generations; not 
generations, but centuries. Yet America is 
taking over this people at least one generation 
ahead of the point at which many nations have 
accepted the guardianship of subject races. The 
three hundred years of mediaeval civilization 
and ecclesiasticism which Spain gave the Phil- 
ippines at once hardened and enriched the 
native character. With certain evil results were 
joined beneficent effects. Yet, notwithstanding 
this temporal advantage, the lifting of a peo- 



GREAT MEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 243 

pie so diverse as to include gentlemen, head- 
hunters, and naked savages is to take genera- 
tion after generation. " There is no discharge 
in this war." But the problem should become 
more simple with each passing decade, the ex- 
pense to the home government lessened, the 
opposing elements minimized, till, with the 
increasing degree of political and other inde- 
pendence gradually given this people with 
each year, America can fittingly retire, her 
work done, her problem solved, a subject peo- 
ple lifted into worthy place and power. That 
happy day is to dawn, but its dawning is far 
away in the future. 

This time is made more distant by reason 
of a simple condition now prevailing, the brief 
tenure of the residence of most men and fami- 
lies. Some stay two years, some five, and some 
— they are few — ten. The climate is enervat- 
ing, and the distance from home great. Chil- 
dren here born and bred are in peril of being 
weak in body. No American can worthily be 
blamed for his unwillingness to do his perma- 
nent work in these islands. 



244 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

The same condition obtains in India. As 
Townsend says in his "Asia and Europe": 
" No ruler stays there to help, or criticise, or 
moderate his successor. No successful white 
soldier founds a family. No white man who 
makes a fortune builds a house or buys an 
estate for his descendants. The very planter, 
the very engine-driver, the very foreman of 
works, departs before he is sixty, leaving no 
child, or house, or trace of himself behind." l 
Permanence, however, would vastly promote 
the worth of the forces making for betterment 
in both India and the Philippines. Permanence 
would mean accumulation of thought and of 
experience. But even with this limitation, the 
greatness of the results which the great men 
of the Philippines are winning for America 
and for the race is assured. 

1 Asia and Europe, by Meredith Townsend, p. 86. 



XYI 

THE AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE 
PHILIPPINES 

Governor - General Smith, of the Philip- 
pines, concluding a long conversation upon 
the worthiness and efficiency of the Americans 
who have come to the islands, said, "But, after 
all, the best of them all is the American 
teacher." The American teachers, both men 
and women, are doing more for the permanent 
elevation and improvement of the Filipinos 
than all other forces and personalities. These 
teachers are of good origin. They are the 
children of the great body of native American 
homes. Many of them are graduates of the 
better colleges, especially of the colleges of 
the Middle West and of the Pacific Coast. 
They are possessed of high ideals. They have 
an instinct for efficiency. They are willing to 
endure hardships as good soldiers. They unite 
intellectual insight and comprehension with 



246 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

the moral virtues. They are forceful without 
officiousness, and, while conscious of their 
power, and watchful for opportunity, are yet 
not arrogant. Men and women of this noble 
type have for nine and more years been work- 1 
ing as teachers in the Philippines, are still work- 
ing, and are to continue. There are now eight 
hundred of them. 

At the head of this noble force are the Di- 
rector of Education and his administrative as- 
sociates. Next to this central body at Manila, 
stands the officer who is known as the division 
superintendent. A province represents the 
field of service of the division superintendent. 
Upon him rests the responsibility for the effi- 
ciency of the public school system. He is the 
immediate head of all school work conducted 
in his province or division. All teachers and 
principals report to him, and are immediately 
subject to his direction. He appoints all muni- 
cipal teachers. His recommendations are very 
largely considered in the promotion of Amer- 
ican teachers and Insular native teachers. He 
has under his immediate direction in some in- 



AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 247 

stances as many as fifty American teachers 
and two hundred Filipinos. He is the repre- 
sentative of the school work before the pro- 
vincial board, and in cases is a member of the 
provincial board, — the governing board of 
the province. All correspondence from or to 
teachers passes through his office. He distrib- 
utes school supplies, and is accountable for 
the school property of the division to the Audi- 
tor of the Archipelago. He has daily business 
relations with the provincial boards, the presi- 
dents, and other municipal officers of the town, 
with the American teachers, the Filipino 
teachers, and close personal relations with the 
entire Filipino population of his province. 
With him rest to a very large extent the good 
discipline of the force, the attitude of the 
teachers toward their duties, and the general 
efficiency and success of the school work. A 
large part of his time is spent in travel from 
town to town, a work not only onerous, but fre- 
quently accompanied by danger from storms, 
high water, dangerous seas, ladrones, and epi- 
demic disease. The work makes demands upon 



248 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

every high quality a man may possess. It calls 
for courage, judgment, tact, and sympathy. 
It is the opinion of the general superintend- 
ent that this body of men is to-day one of the 
most respected and influential forces in the 
Archipelago. Their qualities — physical, men- 
tal, and moral — are exceptionally high. Such 
is the interpretation given in official docu- 
ments of this important phase of the service. 

In the graduated systems of administrative 
supervision, next to the work of the division 
superintendent of the province falls the work 
of the superintendent of a small local district. 
His work is of a kind similar to that of the 
head of a division. Of this service the direc- 
tor says : — 

As supervising teacher he is the representa- 
tive of the division superintendent in the dis- 
trict. He must consult, tactfully and helpfully, 
with the municipal president and council, re- 
present the school needs of the locality to this 
body, and obtain the cooperation and financial 
support. His relationship with the people of 
the town must be kindly, helpful, intimate, 
and above reproach. He has under him a 
corps of native officers of from half a dozen 



AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 249 

to thirty, whose work must be laid out before 
them each week, or often each day, and who 
must be constantly visited and assisted in its 
discharge. He has a further task of organiz- 
ing new schools, especially in those barrios or 
hamlets which are far separated from the town 
centre, and which are frequently densely ig- 
norant and lawless. The greater part of his 
time is spent in school visitation, sometimes 
on foot, sometimes by horse or vehicle, and 
frequently by canoe on streams that connect 
the different hamlets of the municipality. This 
work must be followed throughout the stormy 
season, is frequently onerous and perilous, and 
can usually be successfully discharged only 
by men of strong constitution and more than 
usual courage and resolution. Except for the 
fact that the teacher is accorded respect and 
protection by practically every class of peo- 
ple in the Archipelago, this work would fre- 
quently contain a considerable element of 
danger. By reason of their profession, how- 
ever, teachers are enabled to visit regularly re- 
mote hamlets of their districts, even in pro- 
vinces still disturbed by bandits or ladrones, 
where a single man in military uniform might 
not go without personal danger. As a part 
of their duty, these teachers have to acquaint 
themselves thoroughly with the geography 
of their districts. They must know each ham- 
let and road, and they must thoroughly under- 



250 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

stand the social composition of the commu- 
nity where they are working. 

To these two forms of supervision, provin- 
cial and district, many American men are de- 
voting themselves. The remaining number, 
both men and women, are giving themselves 
to the actual work of teaching, in high 
schools, or in the normal and trade schools in 
Manila. Engaged in such a service, their work 
does not differ fundamentally from like work 
done in the States. 

But the people of these islands are being 
educated far more by their own native teach- 
ers than by the Americans. No less than six 
thousand Filipinos are now teaching. These 
six thousand, however, are largely the pro- 
duct themselves of American teaching. Upon 
them and their associates and successors does 
rest, and will come to rest more completely, 
the actual and broad duty of giving the youth 
of their own country an education. The testi- 
mony is strong that they are able, and be- 
coming yet more able, to undertake this duty. 
The teaching which I have seen and heard is 



AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 251 

of a high order of excellence. Under them 
are now enrolled about a half million of Fili- 
pino boys and girls. The school population 
of the islands is estimated at twelve hundred 
thousand. After nine years of educational 
occupation, almost one half of the children 
are in school. A great, a very great result it 
is. The cost, too, is one which represents 
economy as well as efficiency : it is less, each 
year, than twenty-five hundred thousand dol- 
lars, and no small share of the sum — almost 
a million — is paid by the taxes of the pro- 
vinces and municipalities themselves. 

The course of study in these schools is not 
unlike that found in the American schools of 
similar grade. Its length, however, is much 
abridged. Many of the boys and girls have 
to be content, in all their eagerness for an 
education, with only three years. But the 
young Filipino has an active, avaricious mind, 
and he is able to take in much. In the course, 
however, more attention is paid to the sciences 
than at home. This teaching is given for its 
material benefit. In America it is felt by 



252 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

many that the material benefits of education 
are too strongly emphasized. The cultural 
studies should receive a larger share of atten- 
tion. But in our Western Pacific possessions 
an opposite interpretation and practice should 
and does prevail. Yet, despite this technical 
emphasis, intimations of the founding of a uni- 
versity are heard : and already medical instruc- 
tion, apparently of a high scientific character, 
is provided. 

The world has come to the conclusion that 
education represents the most efficient and eco- 
nomical method of civilization. With all of its i 
forcef ulness and carefulness, it is still open in 
many respects to the charge of pecuniary ex- 
travagance and administrative wastefulness. 
The results, too, at times seem alarmingly 
slight, superficial, and temporary. The Director 
of Education in the Philippines has such effects 
in mind when he writes : — 

The great mass of public school pupils are 
children of the poor or lowest classes. What 
will public instruction do for them? Will it, 
as we hope, make them independent producers, 



AMERICAN TEACHER IN THE PHILIPPINES 253 

skilled workmen, intelligent citizens of their 
towns, free them from debts, raise their stand- 
ard of life, and elevate their moral character ? 
This is the final test of the service, the stand- 
ard by which this system of public instruction 
must in the end be judged. I must admit that 
whether or not the public schools will do all 
this, we cannot say. Whether they can make 
the masses intelligent, industrious, economical, 
and upright is a question which will take some 
years of further progress to demonstrate, and 
argument whether for or against such hopes is 
at the present time mostly futile. 

But when all is said, the most satisfactory 
of all American achievements in the Philip- 
pines — and many are very satisfactory — is the 
educational, and in this educational achieve- 
ment the American teachers deserve the meed 
of highest praise. 



XYII 

THE COMPETITION OF THE EACES IN 
THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 

As the world shrinks, the relationships of the 
various peoples of the world become closer. 
The closer relationships represent more intense 
competitions. In no part is the significance of 
commercial, industrial, and even personal com- 
petitions of the races more impressively pre- 
sented than in the Straits Settlements. 

The Straits Settlements still represent Brit- 
ish political power. The century of domi- 
nance is probably the first of several centuries 
of control. But British political policy does 
not forbid the entrance of the commercial and 
industrial forces of other nations. Of all other 
nations, Germany is seeking to establish these 
forces up and down the Malay Peninsula. In 
Penang, and even in Singapore, and in the 
smaller cities, is felt the commercial pressure 
of German manufacturers and merchants. 



RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 255 

The Englishman is, on the whole, retiring, and 
the Teuton is coming in. The Londoner who 
now comes to Penang is more eager to get back 
home than was his elder brother of a genera- 
tion ago, and instead of staying thirty years, 
as did the elder brother, is inclined to remain 
only fifteen. The German consequently profits. 

The goods, too, which this new German 
sends into this part of the world make a more 
effective appeal than do the goods sent out by 
and to the old Britisher. They are a cheaper 
sort of goods, cheaper both in price and qual- 
ity. But it is the articles — personal, domestic, 
agricultural — of the smaller cost which the 
Malay desires. His wages are infinitesimal. 
His scale of living is of the lowest. The well- 
made, the better made, products of England, 
he feels he cannot afford. He buys the infe- 
rior German article, but at a price which his 
thin purse allows. 

It is also probable that the German settled 
in the Straits feels the support of the home 
government more directly and constantly than 
does the Britisher. The British government 



256 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

gives an open door to its subjects, protection 
to life and property, but its policy is not the 
promotion of individual interests. The Ger- 
man government, however, is so eager to es- 
tablish a great colonial system that it is will- 
ing to give not only personal protection, but 
a certain promotion to individual interests and 
concerns. 

In this competition of the white races in 
the Straits Settlements, other nationalities 
than the British and the German have small 
share. The French colonial system has never 
proved to be successful except at a very high, 
a too high, cost; and even at such a cost, 
who would dare to say that it represents a 
noble type of success? The Hollander has 
long been engaged in this work of coloniza- 
tion in this general region of the globe, but 
his work has been rather that of a farmer than 
of a merchant. The American, too, be it said, 
must be counted out. He has not been will- 
ing, and he apparently is still unwilling, to 
seek a sale of his goods in the Malay Pen- 
insula and neighboring parts. A friend of 



RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 257 

mine, an American, a graduate of an Ameri- 
can college, after trying for some years to 
sell American iron, steel, and other goods in 
Siam and Singapore, is giving up the attempt. 
" We cannot," he declares, " get our home 
manufacturers to put up the goods in such 
ways as these people like." In this region of 
the East, and in other regions, too, are, how- 
ever, it may be said in passing, two American 
companies which have succeeded in getting 
much trade, the Standard Oil Company and 
the Singer Sewing Machine Company. These 
organizations have been willing to adjust the 
goods which they wish to sell to the special 
demands, or even prejudices, of these peoples. 
Even if the Malay has not wanted the Standard 
Oil Company's oil, he has wanted the can. 
The can serves as a water bucket, a wash- 
boiler, a rice pot, and, split cornerwise, as a 
dustpan. 

This competition is not confined to the 
white-faced races. It belongs quite as much to 
the brown and the yellow peoples. In it the 
Malay is hardly a factor. He is the child of 



258 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

contented indolence. Give him a piece of fish 
and a sand-bank on the seashore where he can 
bask in the sun, and he is happy. He is un- 
willing to become a competitor in the world's 
commercial and other strifes. The Burmese, 
too, if a higher type, is likewise reluctant. In 
one month he can earn enough to support 
himself the other eleven : why should he seek 
to transmute a land ordained for ease into a 
country of achievement? 

The active factor in all commercial and 
financial competition in the Straits Settle- 
ments is the Chinese. He is present every- 
where. In every employment is he found. He 
pulls your rickshaw; he waits on you at 
table ; he makes out your draft at the bank- 
er's ; he sells your ticket at the steamboat of- 
fice: he compounds your prescription at the 
druggist's. Laborious, observant, economical, 
careful, — he is a type of efficiency. If the 
Britisher wishes to sell his property and re- 
turn home, the Chinese buys it. If the trav- 
eler wishes a simple errand done, the Chinese 
boy is summoned. If one wishes for an impor- 



RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 259 

tant commission to be executed, no one is so 
certain to carry the " message to Garcia " as 
this same man. From washing linen to mend- 
ing coats and building buildings, this same 
man is working. 

He has his limitations. He lacks accuracy ; 
he is not thorough. With all his patience and 
ploddingness goes along an element of haste 
and unwillingness to take pains. He is hon- 
est, yet so avaricious is he that the buyer 
should be willing to be watchful. He does 
not readily take the initiative, and, so gifted 
is he in the imitative arts, that he might not 
prove to be a worthy master in a new crisis. 

But subject to all his limitations, the Chi- 
nese is at present the chief of the competing 
non-white races of the Malay Peninsula. He 
— this Chinese man — mingles easily with 
the other races. He is not a fighter. He goes 
about his business, and he lets other men go 
about theirs. He marries the daughters of 
other colored races, and the children seem — 
as in the Hawaiian Islands — to be of a race 
better than either the paternal or the mater- 



260 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

nal stock. The Burmese, the whole Malay 
race, are indolent, easy-going, impassive, as 
are the Hawaiians, and as are most peoples 
who live in a permanently high temperature. 
But such a race united with an active, forth- 
putting, vigorous race, like the Chinese, brings 
forth a new people, quiet without lethargy, 
active without great energy, and efficient. 
Such a result is found in the Straits Settle- 
ments and in other tropical parts where the 
Chinese choose as their wives the daughters 
of native races. 

The Chinese are more afraid of the compe- 
titions — commercial and racial — of the Japa- 
nese than of any other nation. The Japanese, 
however, have not yet entered the Straits 
Settlements in appreciable numbers. Those 
who leave their native islands prefer to turn 
their faces either toward America, — a land 
which they are inclined to think of as an 
educational and commercial El Dorado, — or 
toward their own, or half own, possessions 
of Korea and Manchuria. To the mainland of 



RACES IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS 261 

eastern Asia the Japanese are moving, and 
will move. In Chinese ports they are found as 
shopkeepers and artisans. Of them as com- 
mercial competitors, the Chinese are quite as 
afraid as are the white carpenters of San 
Francisco afraid of the rivalry of Chinese 
carpenters. Such racial and industrial fore- 
bodings! But the Straits Settlements have 
not yet proved attractive to the people of 
Tokyo and Kyoto. Of the colored races, the 
Chinese are still easily the commercial and 
financial masters. 

In the future, for any length of time which 
is worth while for the mind of man to con- 
sider, it would seem that the political power 
would necessarily abide with the British ; the 
commercial and industrial interests will also 
rest in part with them, but with the German 
commanding a constantly increasing share. 
The German, like the Britisher, looks upon 
the brown and yellow races as distinctly infe- 
rior to the white, and bound always to occupy 
a subordinate place. But beneath the domi- 



262 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

nant white peoples, the German and British, 
will be found the Chinese, hewers of wood 
and drawers of water, yet slowly lifting them- 
selves into place and power. 



XVIII 

INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 
IN THE FAR EAST 

Some of the most efficient forces making for 
civilization in the Far East are indirect. Such 
forces have not for their primary or immedi- 
ate purpose the promoting of civilization ; but 
though holding other purposes — commercial, 
scientific, or national — as primary, yet their 
presence and operation do result in the growth 
of civilization. Such forces are becoming at 
once more numerous and more influential. 

Among these forces are to be named all com- 
mercial and industrial undertakings. Every 
railroad or telegraph or telephone line built 
in China, or Korea, or Japan, serves to intro- 
duce to the people of these lands most impor- 
tant symbols, methods, and results of Western 
civilization. Every steamship entering the har- 
bor of Nanking or of Hankow carries not only 
the goods, but at least some of the good of the 



264 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

occidental world. Every bridge built by Amer- 
ican or English engineers serves to unite the 
peoples of the East and of the West in more 
intelligent sympathies. It may be added that 
this condition lays upon the people of the West 
serious responsibilities. The Japanese mer- 
chant has a bad reputation for honesty, but 
the Japanese government is distinguished for 
its integrity ; the Chinese merchant is distin- 
guished for his integrity, but his government 
is likewise as distinguished for its practice 
of graft, great and small. But the American 
and the English merchant or engineer hurts 
the cause of civilization in these two great 
empires whenever he, directly or indirectly, 
permits or promotes chicanery in commercial 
affairs. The higher as well as the lower inter- 
ests of America in China received a disastrous 
blow in the Canton and Hankow Railroad un- 
dertaking. The Chinese do not forget the con- 
duct of some Americans in the sale of that 
concession. 

The traveling, too, of Americans and Eng- 
lish in the Far East should be counted on the 



INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 265 

side of the beneficent forces. Most obvious is 
it to say that the influence of certain travelers 
is pestiferous ; but, on the whole, each of this 
vast and constantly increasing throng carries 
along a glimpse of possibilities of a larger and 
finer life. The same result is accomplished 
through the Japanese and Chinese commission- 
ers, who come to America or England for a 
stay either brief or prolonged. 

But especially is the civilization of the Far 
East helped forward by the Japanese and Chi- 
nese students who come to America. The influ- 
ence of the one hundred and twenty Chinese 
youth who came to America thirty-seven years 
ago, although called home prematurely, has for 
a generation been of tremendous worth. Few 
of them have come to occupy such significant 
places as Sir Chentung Liang-Cheng, a for- 
mer Ambassador from China to the United 
States, has filled ; yet in various administrative 
offices, as well as in private business, they have 
done much for the reconstruction of their an- 
cient and conservative nation. To the Chinese 
coming to America one peril emerges, — the 



266 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

peril of becoming so wedded to Western ways 
that they, on returning home, find themselves 
foreigners in their own home land. Their new 
sympathies are not grateful to their country- 
men, and the old ways are not pleasant to 
themselves. They are " betwixt two worlds, 
one dead, and the other waiting to be born." 
The Japanese who graduate at American col- 
leges, returning to their native islands, are 
free from such untoward conditions. Respon- 
sive, perhaps too responsive, is the welcome 
given by their fellow countrymen to the ideas 
and ideals which they bring out of their West- 
ern residence. 

From this international fellowship of col- 
lege men springs a further indirect force mak- 
ing for civilization. College men everywhere 
have a peculiar feeling of camaraderie for one 
another. This camaraderie is based upon con- 
ditions more solid than its more obvious and 
lighter manifestations might lead the careless 
observer to think. It is based upon a fellow- 
ship with the higher thoughts, feelings, and 
relations of humanity. Such a fellowship be- 



INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 267 

longs to the Chinese no less than to the Japa- 
nese, and to the Japanese no less than to the 
American. Baron Kaneko, of Tokyo, speak- 
ing of the desirability of forming a university 
club in Tokyo, — a capital where are some 
fourscore Yale graduates and twoscore Har- 
vard, — said that the university men of Tokyo 
could remove any fear of war for unworthy 
cause between Japan and the United States. 
The remark was true, and has relations far be- 
yond Tokyo and even Japan. 

A further indirect force making for civili- 
zation is the presence of American teachers 
in the government schools of Japan and of 
China. For more than a generation these 
teachers have been working in Japanese 
schools. In the last decade a few have entered 
the government schools of China. These men 
are usually graduates of American colleges, 
and in personal character represent the best 
which the American home or college can give. 
They may be Christian men, or not ; but if 
they are they do not use their position to teach 
the Christian faith, or to impose its principles 



268 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

upon those who twice a month are required 
to worship the tablet of Confucius ; they may 
teach the English Bible, in informal classes, 
and to large numbers, but the large attendance 
arises from the desire to learn English, not 
to know the Bible. Nevertheless, the presence 
and the teaching of these men are real, even 
if indirect, causes of a higher life. They bear 
the world-sense to a people to many of whom 
there is no world beyond the great wall or the 
yellow water. It may be added in passing, 
that the field for teaching in the government 
schools of China is one that should appeal to 
the recent college graduate. The opportunity 
for human service is rich ; the enlargement of 
one's conception of life great; and, what the re- 
cent graduate is commonly obliged to consider, 
the salary is larger by twofold than he could 
secure in America. 

The Young Men's Christian Association is 
found throughout the Far East. It should, 
perhaps, be interpreted as a most direct rather 
than an indirect force for civilization. But, of 
whatever nature, it represents a mighty power 



INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 269 

making for human betterment. The organiza- 
tion is administered in wisdom, inspired by 
warm personal devotion, and carefully kept 
free from untoward complications. Its officers 
in such cities as Tokyo, Kyoto, Peking, and 
Shanghai represent the best type of young 
American and oriental manhood. Its buildings 
already built, or to be built, are centres for 
the sending forth of the richest forces for 
preserving men from intellectual disintegration 
and moral dissipation, and for inspiring them 
with the highest ideals. 

To another force allusion should be made. 
The presence of a simple and noble home in 
any village or town of the Far East is an ex- 
ample which represents and helps onward the 
course of civilization. By those who do not 
appreciate this fact, the missionary is some- 
times accused of living in an unfitting luxury. 
The charge is usually unfounded, and is some- 
times I fear base. The home of the better 
people whose life is lived, and whose work is 
done, in the Far East embodies what the home 
should embody, — restfulness, happiness, com- 



270 EDUCATION IN THE FAR EAST 

panionship, recreation, purity, inspiration. It 
also represents simplicity in furnishing and 
economy in expenditure ; abundance without 
wastefulness, carefulness free from penurious- 
ness. Such a home is a moving example to 
peoples among whom the idea of the home is 
lacking, or, if not lacking, takes on unworthy 
forms. For the home should be made the cen- 
tre of civilization no less in the Far East than 
in the Occident. 

It should be said, in conclusion, that the 
daily newspaper represents a power promotive 
of the larger vision and understanding of the 
nations of the Far East. Only a few years ago 
all China contained only one daily paper 
printed in the vernacular, the " Peking Ga- 
zette." To-day, after thirty years, newspapers 
are numbered by scores. Japan is richer in 
daily journals than China. Even if in neither 
country there is freedom of the press, yet their 
simple publication enlarges the understanding 
of all the people. In Peking is a daily news- 
paper owned and edited by a woman, and a 
very good paper I know it to be. The papers 



INDIRECT FORCES FOR CIVILIZATION 271 

printed in English help forward the same cause, 
although somewhat less effectively ; for, with 
two or three exceptions, they do not represent 
the best type of journalism. The worth of all 
these journals as expressing public sentiment 
constantly increases. 



INDEX 



Administrators, Japanese as, 104. 

Agriculture in India, 203. 

America in the Pacific, 223. 

American education vs. Japa- 
nese, 70. 

American teacher in the Philip- 
pines, 245. 

American teacher in Japan and 
China, 267. 

Arnold, Matthew, reference to, 
130 ; quotation from, 166. 

Balance of power in Far East, 

34. 
Baroda, Gaekwar of, quotations 

from, 205, 207, 210, 216, 217. 
Barrows, Director, quotations 

from, 248, 252. 
Benares, temples in, 214. 
Bismarck, reference to, 102. 
Boxer movement, 146, 162. 
Buddhism, 11. 

Camaraderie of students, 266. 

Career of college mau in India, 
187. 

Caste in India, 179; harm of, 
209. 

Chang - Chih - Tung, quotation 
from, 147. 

Change of educational purposes 
of Chinese authorities, 151. 

Chentung-Liang-Cheng, refer- 
ence to, 265. 

China, American teachers in, 
267 ; Asiatic, 25 ; climate of, 



24 ; Confucianism in, 23 ; con- 
servatism of, 26 ; for Chinese, 
159; gambling in, 132; gov- 
ernment of, 19, 26; "graft" 
in, 21 ; grades of education in, 
138 ; industrialism in, 165 ; in- 
fant mortality in, 16 ; lack of 
society in, 131 ; lack of good 
teachers in, 54, 154 ; literature 
of, 24; natural resources of, 
24; new education in, 138; 
opium smoking in, 132 ; prob- 
lem of, 16. 

Chinese, army, 125; astuteness 
of mind of, 27 ; commercial in- 
tegrity of, 25 ; conception of 
disease, 17 ; course of study in, 
schools, 139 ; cowards, 159 
currency, 136 ; education, dif- 
ficulties of, 149 ; family, 126 
funerals, 18 ; government, 124 
" graft " in, army, 160 ; guilds 
128 ; institutions, 123 ; lack 
of, patriotism, 161 ; laws, 134 
menace, 158 ; press, 133 ; pro 
perty vested in family, 127 
scholar, high place of, in so 
ciety, 152 ; schoolhouses, 143 
in Straits Settlements, 258 
students, mind of, 144 ; super- 
stitions, 18 ; teachers, 144 
text-books, 143; virility of, 
24; worship of Confucius 
among, 129. 

Christianity, missionary power 
of, in education, 148. 



274 



INDEX 



Civilization in Philippines de- 
mands time, 242. 

Clergymen, small number of, 
from Indian Christian col- 
leges, 188. 

College men in Philippines, 240. 

Commerce and industry as civil- 
izers, 263. 

Commerce as a calling in India, 
193. 

Competition of races in Straits 
Settlements, 254. 

Confucius, ethics of, 15, 23 ; wor- 
ship of, among Chinese, 129. 

Course of study in Chinese 
schools, 139. 

Cromer's Report on Egypt, 52. 

Curzon's administration in In- 
dia, 36. 

Curzon, reference to, 218. 

Disease, conception of, among 
Chinese, 17. 

Education, higher, for women in 
India, 178 ; Japanese vs. 
American, 70 ; of girls in 
Egypt, 55 ; the problem of, in 
Egypt, 50. 

Education without religion and 
with ethics, 95. 

Educational system in Philip- 
pines, 246. 

Egypt, Cromer's Reports on, 52 ; 
education the problem of, 50 ; 
education of girls in, 55 ; lack 
of teachers in, 54 ; Mohamme- 
dan education in, 51 ; problem 
of, 50 ; trade schools in, 53. 

Eliot, President, reference to, 
155. 

England, in India, advantage of 



rule of, 196 ; in Straits Settle- 
ments, 254. 

English colonial government vs. 
United States government in 
the Philippines, 237. 

Ethics, teaching of, in Japan, 14, 
66, 100. 

Eurasians, allusion to, 13. 

Experimentation, vegetable, in 
Hawaiian Islands, 231. 

Filipinos as teachers, 250. 
Foreign students in America, 
265 ; peril of, 266. 

Gambling in China, 132. 

Ganges River in religious rites, 
215. 

German goods in the Straits Set- 
tlements, 255. 

Germany in the Straits Settle- 
ments, 254. 

Government of China, 19. 

Guilds, Chinese, 128. 

Hall, Charles Cuthbert, quota- 
tion from, 221. 

Hart, Sir Robert, reference to, 
21. 

Hawaiian Islands, inspection of 
plants and animals in, 22S ; 
parasites in, 226; vegetable 
experimentation in, 231. 

Hindus, division among, 198. 

Home an aid to civilization, 269. 

Hospitals, Japanese, 106. 

India, advantage of English rule 
in, 196 ; agriculture in, 203 ; 
anomalousness of England's 
presence in, 49 ; career of col- 
lege man in, 187; caste in, 



INDEX 



275 



179, 209 ; commercial and ag- 
ricultural education in, 175 ; 
Curzon's administration in, 36 ; 
early marriage in, 179 ; eco- 
nomic future of, 203; future 
of, 196; future of women in, 
184; higher education for 
women in, 178; industrialism 
in, 204 ; lack of sympathy of 
English residents with natives 
in, 43 ; national consciousness 
in, 45 ; need of technical and 
industrial education in, 169; 
opposition of parents to edu- 
cation of daughters in, 180 ; 
people of, better fitted for 
self-government, 39 ; people 
of, ignorance of, 41 ; political 
freedom in, 47 ; problem of, 
36 ; religions in, 214 ; seclusion 
of women in, 178 ; small num- 
ber of clergymen from Chris- 
tian colleges in, 188 ; small 
salaries of teachers in, 190 ; 
technical education, value of, 
in, 170 ; technical schools in, 
172 ; universities in, 183 ; un- 
rest in, temporary causes of, 
36 ; unrest in, permanent 
causes of, 39 ; women as teach- 
ers in, 185. 

Indian, commerce as a calling 
for the, 193 ; journalism as a 
profession for the, 192 ; law 
as a profession for the, 189 ; 
medicine as a profession for 
the, 191 ; mind, 171 ; students, 
poverty of, 171 ; teaching as a 
profession for the, 189. 

Indirect forces for civilization in 
the Far East, 263. 

Ito, policy of, in Korea, 30. 



Japan, American teachers in, 
267 ; as a colonizing and ex- 
panding power, 112; as a 
world-power, 8, 146 ; crisis in, 
3 ; education without religion 
and with ethics in, 95; ex- 
clusion of dogmatic religious 
instruction in, 98 ; influence of, 
in China, 146 ; leadership in, 
115 ; relation of, to Korea, 
28 ; simple life in, 4 ; simple 
life, forces opposing, 5 ; simple 
life, forces promoting, 9 ; small 
area of cultivation in, 113; 
small number of emigrants 
from, 118; Tanamoto's method 
of religious teaching in, 98 J 
teaching of ethics in, 14; 
wealth in, 5. 

Japanese, an adjustable people, 
115 ; as administrators, 104 ; 
budget for education, 75 ; 
courtesy the foe of efficiency, 
110; education vs. American, 
70 ; education in ethics of, 66 ; 
family, 67 ; government in 
Korea vs. United States gov- 
ernment in the Philippines, 
238 ; greater love of, for na- 
tion than for territory, 113 ; 
a hardy race, 114 ; hospitals, 
106 ; lack of sense of value of 
time, 107 ; libraries, 76 ; mind, 
61 ; mind, absence of Greek 
in training of, 65 ; mind in evo- 
lutionary process, 68 ; obedi- 
ence of, 117 ; passion for prog- 
ress, 113 ; racial purity of, 12 ; 
rescript on education, 70, 71 ; 
schools, examinations in, 81 ; 
schools, fees in, 85 ; schools 
large attendance in, 85; 



276 



INDEX 



schools, popularity of subjects, 
in, 80 ; schoolhouses, 73 ; self- 
restraint of, 10 ; students, dor- 
mitories for, 90; students, 
laboriousness of, 91 ; students, 
orderliness of, 93 ; students, 
personal relation of, to teach- 
ers, 83 ; students, poverty of, 
88 ; students, sports of, 92 ; 
teachers, 72 ; teachers, pension 
system of, 79; teachers, per- 
sonal relations to students of, 
83 ; teachers, salaries of, 77 ; 
teachers, -women as, 72 ; uni- 
versities, expenses of students 
in, 89. 

Jones, J. P., quotation from, 
212. 

Journalism, an aid to civilization, 
270 ; as a profession in India, 
192. 

Kaneko, Baron, reference to, 
267. 

Korea, a belated nation, 29; 
doom of, 35 ; lack of leader- 
ship in, 31 ; problem of, 4 ; 
relation of, to Japan, 28; 
world's interest in, 33. 

Lack of good teachers in China, 
154. 

Ladd, George Trumbull, quota- 
tions from, 101, 102. 

Law as a profession for the In- 
dian, 189. 

Leaf-hoppers in Hawaiian Is- 
lands, 226. 

Malay race, 257. 
Mandarin, injustice of court of, 
20. 



Manila, cost of living in, 236. 
Marriage, early, in India, 

179. 
Medicine as a profession for the 

Indian, 191. 
Memory, training of, 54. 
Mitsui family, reference to, 5. 
Mohammedan education in 

Egypt, 51. 
Mohammedan education of girls, 

55. 
Morse, H. B., quotation from 

136. 

Nakashima, text-books of, 15. 
New education in China, 138. 
" North China Daily News," 
quotation from, 133. 

Okura, allusion to, 7. 

Opium smoking in China, 132. 

Pacific, America in the, 223. 

Peril of foreign students in 
America, 266. 

Philippines, American teacher 
in, 245 ; civilization demands 
time in, 242 ; college men in, 
240 ; educational system in, 
246 ; great men in, 235 ; opti- 
mism of men in, 241. 

Productivity of nature in tropica, 
225. 

Racial purity of the Japanese, 

12. 
Religions in India, 214. 

Scholarship, respect for, in Ja- 
pan, 13. 
Science as a national protector, 

225. 



INDEX 



277 



Seclusion of •women in India, 
178. 

Self-restraint of Japanese, 10. 

Small salaries of teachers in In- 
dia, 190. 

Smith, Governor-General, quota- 
tion from, 245. 

Straits Settlements, Chinese in, 
258 ; competition of races in, 
254; England in, 254; Ger- 
many in, 254 ; German goods 
in, 255. 

Students, camaraderie of, 266. 

Superstition among Chinese, 18. 

Tait, Archhishop, quotation 
from, 3. 

Teachers, American, in Japan 
and China, 267 ; lack of, in 
China, 54, 154; lack of, in 
Egypt, 54 ; women as, in In- 
dia, 185. 

Teaching as a profession for the 
Indian, 189. 



Technical schools in India, 172. 
Townsend, Meredith, quotation 

from, 244. 
Trade schools in Egypt, 53. 

United States government in the 
Philippines vs. English colo- 
nial government, 237. 

United States government in the 
Philippines vs. Japanese gov- 
ernment in Korea, 238. 

Universities, expense of Japa- 
nese students in, 89 ; in India, 
183. 

Unrest in India, causes of, 36. 

Vassar, Matthew, reference to, 
186. 

World, government of weaker 
nations of, by stronger, 33. 

Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions in the Far East, 26S. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



IUN 12 1909 



)££&E!. 0F CONGRESS 



I'uiu^HIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIin n 



,0 022 110 981 8 



